


Don't You Know? (That I'm A Moon In Daylight)

by moonflowery



Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Biting, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Fluff, Human/Vampire Relationship, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Vampire Hunters, Vampires, cass as a baby that could kill you basically, dinah the feisty human who should stay away but won't, harley as chaotic powerful vampire, helena the hot but awkward lesbian vampire from isolated sicily, renee 'we should work together' montoya
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:15:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 48,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23325358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonflowery/pseuds/moonflowery
Summary: Helena Bertinelli was somehow the only survivor of the massacre of the Bertinelli Family, the most feared and powerful family of vampire hunters in Gotham. About a hundred years later, she comes back with a plot of revenge. First, she will have to deal with a series of obstacles on her path, some of which include old friends, new friends, and as impossible as she believes it to be, love.Or, the Vampire AU nobody actually asked for. Enjoy.
Relationships: Helena Bertinelli/Dinah Lance, Huntress/Black Canary
Comments: 124
Kudos: 230





	1. Why you creepin' 'round here?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song Creepin' by Hayley Williams.
> 
> This fic is brought to you by the fact that Helena Bertinelli as a vampire sounded awesome and really hot

At first sight, the scene could have been interpreted as normal. One woman, carrying another one, perhaps a friend or lover, into her home, after possibly a fun night out drinking. However, the more attention one paid to details, the more unsettling it all became. The taller woman carrying the other one as if she weighed nothing, she was wearing all black, a hood over her head as part of what looked like a cloak. The smaller woman, completely unconscious and with a smudge of blood on the side of her neck. If possible, it got even stranger after the taller woman tripped a little bit on the last step to the door of the house.

“Ah shit,” she cursed. She regained her balance soon enough, but when she kneeled to place the sleeping woman on the floor against the front door, she didn’t do so very delicately. “Fuck, sorry,” she mumbled when she heard the head of the woman knocking against the door. She fumbled around, trying to get the woman as comfortable as possible. Then, for a few seconds, she only stared. When she noticed the drop of blood still coming from the small wound on the woman’s neck, she reached out with a finger which she then brought to her mouth. Her lips closed on her finger and as soon as her tongue tasted the blood she closed her eyes, delighting in the flavor.

“Alright,” the woman sighed finally, opening her eyes and moving to whisper right by the ear of the unconscious one. “You’re going to sleep now, okay? Sleep profoundly for five minutes. Then you can wake up, and get yourself back home,” saying these last words, the woman grabbed the hand of the other one, placing a set of keys in them and then closing her fist on it, squeezing gently. “You’ll remember going to a bar, getting too drunk. You might remember meeting someone, having fun together. But you were too drunk, you won’t remember her face, or her name, or how you got home. But you’ll know you’re okay.”

Before she was done talking, the woman already felt an unwanted presence getting closer and closer until they were standing right by the sidewalk. The woman didn’t know why this presence felt familiar, why they were there, and why weren’t they scared. They should be. But…

“Helena Bertinelli,” a voice called out from the sidewalk.

Helena frowned in response, trying to remember where she’d heard that voice before, the accent, the fondness when speaking her name, so foreign now. She stood up slowly and removed the hood from her head, there was no use for it now, freeing her short dark hair but not showing her face yet. She tensed her body, ready to attack if necessary. But she was confident, she turned around unhurriedly. The realization hit her slowly but powerfully, like waking up for a nightmare gasping for air.

She gasped a single word in tone of a question, “Montoya?”

Renee chuckled, “That’s right.” She looked similar enough to what Helena remembered. Shoulder-length brown hair, confident posture, inquisitive eyes, and a smile that was ready to turn into a scowl or a playful smirk at the slightest provocation. There were some new lines on her face that to some extent proved the passing of time. Renee continued, “Now, look at you! You look like a damn grown-up woman now.”

Helena looked down and hesitated. Her defenses had crumbled down in an instant and she wasn’t sure how to manage the whiplash of seeing someone from her past so suddenly and unexpectedly. “You look…” she braved a glance at Renee’s face, “older.”

“No shit,” Renee rolled her eyes.

“How are you…”

“I fell for the wrong woman, of course,” Montoya shrugged, “I got turned being way older than you were though. How long has it been now?”

At the last sentence, Renee’s voice turned unexpectedly soft and careful. Helena wasn’t sure if that was better or worse, but her brain wasn’t precisely at its best. She was busy trying not to dwell on the onslaught of unwanted memories that seeing Renee Montoya brought on her.

“About a hundred years,” Helena shrugged noncommittally as if she couldn’t tell exactly how many years, months and days had passed since the event they were implicitly referencing.

The older woman nodded slowly, opened and closed her mouth once or twice trying to find the right words. Still, it came a little breathlessly when she said, “I thought you were just a myth.”

Clueless on what would be an appropriate answer, Helena merely shrugged again. Then she looked around them, at both sides of the street. She might have been looking for a distraction, for a way out, for a sign that helped her understand how she had ended up in that situation. And Renee must have noticed, because an instant later she interrupted Helena’s thoughts saying, “Hey, let me invite you a drink.”

“What?” In no part of her brain that sounded to Helena like a good idea or a logical thing to do.

“Come on, don’t make me beg, you know I won’t.”

Just like that, Renee started walking away, leaving Helena no choice but to follow.

At the Black Mask Club, Helena and Renee hadn’t even gotten their drinks yet when Helena leaned towards Renee at the bar and grumbled, “Why the fuck did you bring me here?” Her temper poking its head out. She didn’t like crowded places. She pretty much hated that place already. So many people, drunk and dancing and being loud and overwhelming her senses.

“Relax Helena,” Renee waved her off, her attention stolen by the drink promptly brought in front of here. “I just think it is important that you know of this place.”

Helena was far from pleased with that answer. She hastily grabbed the drink Renee had ordered for her and drank nearly half of it at once, hissing at the burning taste. She stayed silent. But in her mind, she purposefully cursed Renee, the place they were in, and pretty much the entire city of Gotham for being so loud and messy, full of bad memories and new annoying things.

“Besides,” Renee continued, happily ignoring Helena’s scowl, “you’re not as sly as you think, kid. I know what you’re doing. Most importantly, I think we could work together.”

Immediately, Helena scoffed. She decided not to believe any of Renee’s words. But just in case she added, “I work alone.”

The sharp edge of Helena’s words was drowned away by the music that started to fill the club. It was a drastic change. The loud music with the heavy bass and the repetitive words that were giving Helena a headache was replaced by a much more soothing sound. The new music was melodic and it was accompanied by a soulful voice. Despite her best efforts to remain unbothered, a chill ran through Helena’s body. Thankfully it all went unnoticed by Renee, who simply waved Helena off again.

“Shut up, Bertinelli. I’m trying to listen to my friend,” she said, her eyes focused on the stage while Helena glared angrily at the side of her head. “Black Canary. She’s got a killer voice. You should pay attention.”

Helena tried to fight it, to refuse. It was impossible though. She simply had to turn her head a little bit and there was the stage, and on the stage was the most beautiful woman Helena remembers ever seeing. A dark dress the met beautiful brown skin, a mane of hair that couldn’t ever hide the gorgeous face of the woman singing her heart out in a way that looked so natural to her. It took Helena’s breath away. The way a single woman could effortlessly flip the mood of an entire room and steal the attention of all the people inside. It was a much different and maybe more mighty power than Helena was familiar with. She bit her lip and stared. Black Canary’s voice was at once demanding of attention and soothing enough so that Helena finally relaxed against the bar, took a sip of her drink and allowed herself a minute to look around herself. Why on Earth did Renee think it had been a good idea to bring her to the most popular club in town? Why did people send dirty looks in Renee’s way? She could understand why anybody would look at her weirdly though, to anyone but Renee probably she was a complete foreigner. 

The thing is, Helena was born in Gotham City, as she said, about a hundred years ago. She was the eldest daughter of the leaders of the Bertinelli Family, the most feared and powerful family of vampire hunters in Gotham. They had lived generation and generation of greatness and success. Until, at last, they killed the wrong one. It just so happened that the wrong one had descendants and devotees ready to avenge them. The result was the brutal massacre of the Bertinelli family. The amount of blood spilled was nothing short of nightmarish, as Helena would come to confirm, dreaming of drowning in the blood of her entire family for nearly every day of the century. She should be dead, she should’ve died along with her entire family, she tells herself on her worst days. However, as the blood spilled onto the luxurious carpet and furniture of the Bertinelli mansion and the vampires had a feast, one of them hesitated. A big guy with a bald head and eyes uncharacteristically kind found Helena, badly hurt and on the verge of death. He claims Helena begged him for help, but she can’t remember. What she could never forget though, was the way he dragged her away from there and, right before she died, he bit her neck.

Helena was then moved to Sicily, with the man that took her life and at once made her nearly immortal. For a hundred years she stayed in the old continent, training, getting stronger each day, feeding her body with human blood and her mind, heart and soul with dreams of nothing but revenge. Until she was ready. She came back to Gotham with a list of names that she quickly started to cross out.

That’s how she ended up in the Black Mask Club, hearing Black Canary sing, receiving odd looks from people left and right, and not completely hating the company of Renee Montoya. She knows they both have questions, hundreds of them. They know barely a grain of sand of the deserts that became both of their lives. But they owe each other nothing, right? Renee and her family used to work for the Bertinelli family back then, hunters as well. Helena remembers Montoya as a young woman, passionate about justice instead of just thirsty to kill anything with fangs. But justice and revenge are not exactly the same thing, are they? There’s no way that Helena and Renee’s interests coincide, Helena tells herself. Besides, she works alone. She plans on listening until the song ends, thank Renee for the drink and get out of there, not to be associated with anything about that night again. Of course, nothing will go as planned for Helena Bertinelli, vampire hunter through and through. The irony is not lost on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's the beginning!  
> I hope this doesn't seem like a complete mess. Also I'll try to make the next chapters longer than this. I just couldn't wait to post it  
> Please let me know what you think! But be kind because i genuinely don't know what i'm doing. I just loved this movie and these characters way too much to let them go already  
> Halfway through planning this fic I realized I actually know very little of vampires other than the obvious. If anyone wants to talk additional feedback or give suggestions, talk about the movie, anything at all, just leave a comment or you can also find me on tumblr @afterlaughy  
> see you soon! (also you should totally check my other helena x dinah one shots if you haven't)


	2. Batty pair of eyes, creepin'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some things i want to say before the chapter:
> 
> First of all, thanks to @Elias319 for helping me figure out the vampire stuff! I hope I'm not making a huge mess, I'll probably need you more
> 
> Also, this chapter is way longer than expected. I have no idea if the next chapters will be of this same length or what
> 
> Finally, I am a mess, this is messy, I have no clue what I'm doing and I'm awful at planning ahead on what's gonna happen in whatever I'm writing. but it's fun! I hope you enjoy it!

Back at the Bertinelli Mansion, Helena had a lot of free time to dwell on the events of the previous days. She hadn't been in Gotham for longer than a month, and it's not like she wasn't expecting obstacles in her path, in fact, she had purposefully prepared for it. But seeing Renee Montoya again was far from what she had expected. Even more unexpected were Renee's comments about meeting again and working together. Last time they had seen each other Renee had been an adult, a hunter, very busy but with a clever sense of humor that always got Helena's attention whenever they crossed paths. Helena was just a kid back then. Now they were both almost immortal creatures, which granted them plenty of time to catch up. As far as Helena knew, Montoya was the only person alive in Gotham that knew about her and not only that but she was also offering to meet each other again. _If_ Helena was interested. Which she wasn't.

For Helena, life back in Gotham was pretty simple. She moved in back into the Bertinelli mansion. For a moment it seemed like a bad idea. Going back to the place where your entire family was brutally devoured by vampires in front of your eyes when you were a kid… that's not a choice a reasonable person would make. But Helena didn’t think of herself as very reasonable nor much of a person anyway. There was a single room that stayed locked and Helena avoided it at all costs. She could still smell blood emanating from there. But other than that, she was perfectly content roaming the long hallways, sitting by herself on the large rooms meant to host magnificent parties, carving figures in the wood of the long table in the dining room that should be a place of joy for a big family, washing the blood off her hands in the sink of the kitchen that otherwise remained mostly empty, and last but not least, sitting in every dark corner of every dark room of the house, ruminating on that tragic day of a hundred years ago and gathering all her rage, disgust, ire, thirst for revenge and blood. 

You know, the usual vampire stuff. 

Then, at night, she usually found it easy enough to find a drink, a meal, a woman, she meant. So far she hasn't understood why women make it so easy for her. They willingly, perhaps eagerly, approach her, saving her the mortifying ordeal of nervously approaching them. She's sure that if weren’t for women somehow not hating her awkward and stuttered out nervous sentences, she would’ve starved long ago.

After she's secured her sustenance and made sure the woman, she refused to call victim, made it home safely, she moved on quickly. Nowadays she tried to not take too long on her usual and tortuous internal debates on how disgusted and disappointed her family would be of her, turning into the very monsters they had devoted generation after generation to killing. Staying alive, or whatever she was doing, was a struggle most days. But at the end of the day, all of the worries and doubts were pushed to the back of her mind. She could deal with that later. All she got was her plan of revenge. That's the thing that took up most space in her mind, took most of her time and energy.

Now, her mission wasn't exactly easy. Killing a vampire wasn't easy, she was starting to realize. But, even from a young age, she had learned a lot from her parents, and she had learned even more from the men that took her in back in Sicily. And in this rotten old house, tainted by tragedy so that nobody dared touch it again, she found a fun array of weapons, books and all things her parents kept in a secret room that even after the massacre apparently nobody found. That, coupled with her rage, a century of arduous training, perfecting lethal skills and the fact that she was as powerful as her victims, she didn't hesitate using the word then, that gave her a nice advantage in the field.

A little before sunset, a couple of days after running into Renee, Helena’s routine was interrupted. She was getting ready to go out feeding, despite her reluctance, now that the annoying and overwhelming for her senses presence of the sun would be gone until the next day. But her senses alerted her of someone or something getting close to her property. Helena ran to the front of the house, but before she made it outside an object came crashing through one of the windows of the foyer. Impressive, considering that all windows of the house remained covered with pieces of wood. Helena decided against chasing the intruders and further risking ruining her apparently already ruined secrecy. Instead, she went and picked up the object. It was a human skull that, in Helena’s experience, she could recognize as genuine. Some cracks were on its skull, and a piece of paper was shoved in one of its eye sockets. Helena rolled her eyes. Part of her didn’t even want to know, didn’t want to engage. It wasn’t worth it, she had nothing to worry about.

Nonchalantly, she pulled out the paper and let the skull fall at her feet.

“We got you, crossbow killer.”

_No, fuck, you don’t_. Helena groaned, crumbled the piece of paper in her hand. The blood used to write on the paper woke up her hunger, which, in turn, woke up her rage. It didn’t matter her confidence and her plans, everything faded to the background of her anger. She cursed loudly and ran to one of the forgotten chimneys of the grand house. She knew she couldn’t get it to work though, and her frustration grew exponentially each passing second. Helena destroyed a coffee table and a chair hoping its wood would serve to light up a fire. She fried matches and a lighter, but at most she got a weak flame to start that didn’t satisfy her at all. She stomped around the house, feeling the need to create a big destructive representation of what she felt inside. Finally, she came across a storage of all alcoholic beverages that back in her day her father treasured. She picked two bottles, one in each hand, and with a smirk on her lips made it back to the chimney. With all the strength she could manage, she threw first a bottle, smiled at the flames the shoot out of the chimney and threw the second one. For a minute or two, all Helena could do was smile at the fire burning in front of her. Beautiful, deadly, destroyer of anything and everything. She threw the piece of paper into the fire and watched as it quickly burned away. In her mind, she could easily picture the people that sent that message burning there instead. She’d make sure that’d be their fate.

Helena waited until the fire calmed down enough to feel confident her whole house wouldn’t burn down and then she got ready to go out. When she threw the paper into the fire, she had felt the flame lick up a bit of her hand, and she barely hissed at the burn. She knew the by the next morning there wouldn’t be traces of it.

* * *

Renee Montoya was just leaving the Black Mask Club, not too far yet, almost reaching the car parked in an alleyway, when she felt someone following her. She barely had time to tense in preparation for an encounter, and then relax when she recognized who exactly was coming her way. This split second of lowering her guard was more than enough for Helana to easily run to Renee, push her to the wall of the alley and hold her there with one arm on her neck.

“Fuck! Helena, what-” Renee tried to speak.

“Who else knows about me?” Helena seethed.

“What?!”

Helena loosed her hold just enough for Renee to try to step away from the wall, at which point Helena just knocked her back harder against the wall.

“You said you knew what I was doing,” Helena whispered each word with a sharp edge to her voice, “ _who else knows?_ ” 

Renee stayed silent though. It further frustrated Helena the fact that she couldn’t exactly see fear in Renee’s eyes. Helena was so focused on Renee’s reaction that she didn’t pick on the other person running towards her until it was too late to move away. She let this new person crash against her. They were strong enough to make Helena shift but of course, not nearly strong enough to take her down.

“Get away from her you asshole!”

Helena shifted so that she was only roughly grabbing the collar of Renee’s shirt with her fist but she pulled away enough to look to her side and come face to face with Black Canary, the gorgeous and talented singer from the Black Mask Club. Helena gulped. Her emotions staggered. Fuck, she cursed to herself, she had angered the beautiful singer, that’s the last thing she wanted to do. To make things worse, Black Canary was even more beautiful up close, even if she was scowling at Helena. Plus, the singer didn’t back down or look frightened at all by the obvious fact that she didn’t stand a chance against Helena. She definitely distracted Helena long enough for Renee to get away from her grip, but this brought Helena out of her daze.

“Hey-” she started in a threatening tone as she stepped towards Renee again.

In the blink of an eye though, Black Canary had pulled a small object from one of her pockets.

“Stay the fuck away from her!” she yelled.

Helena stayed still. She stared at the gleaming silver switchblade in the woman’s hand and tilted her head, studying the situation. She took a single step back.

“Dinah, Dinah, it’s okay,” Renee intervened, “Put that thing down.”

_Dinah…_ Helena filed that name in her mind. For some reason, it made her smile. But when she saw Dinah still frowning at her, she returned the gesture. Dinah should be scared of her.

“Helena,” Renee took it upon herself to make an introduction, “This is Dinah Lance. A good friend of mine, a good person, and someone you’d want on your side in this city. Dinah, this an old friend of mine, Helena Bertinelli.”

The recognition in Dinah’s face was immediate. “From the legend? Of the Bertinelli massacre?” Dinah’s question came out almost breathlessly, the millions of questions that came attached hung in the air between them.

Helena looked down at her feet. She didn’t want to be part of a legend.

“Dinah and I were just on our way to meet up with a friend. Are you riding with us or you have a car?” Renee continued talking.

“I… I have a bike. But I’m not going with you,” Helena tried to cover with initial stutter by raising her voice towards the end.

“Don’t you want answers?”

Renee barely looked over her shoulder when she threw that reply at Helena. She was already walking towards the car parked nearby. Before following, Dinah hesitated. She took a step forward toward Helena, making the taller woman feel a bit nervous in a way that was entirely new for her.

“For the record, regardless of some of my friendships, I still hate your kind,” Dinah said slowly, taking a look at Helena from head to toe.

“Why?” Helena couldn’t help but wonder out loud.

“Monsters like you killed my mother.”

Dinah’s confession hung heavy in the air between them for a second. But nothing about Helena’s reaction was what she had expected.

“Mine too.”

The words made Dinah’s lips part in an almost inaudible gasp. She hesitated again, but decided against whatever had crossed her mind a second ago and instead walked away from Helena, who stared at her as she left.

When Dinah was close enough to Renee again she smirked and showed a set of keys dangling from her fingers, “I drive,” she said in a singsong voice. Both women kept walking, but before Dinah got in the driver’s seat she turned around, looked a Helena for a long moment and without saying anything else she got in.

Helena felt at a complete loss. To say she wasn’t used to these kinds of situations would be an understatement. Part of her actually didn’t want answers to her questions. But a larger part was curious, still trusted Renee as if she were an older, cooler woman to look up to, and _maybe_ wanted to see Dinah again.

* * *

A few minutes later, Helena parked her bike right behind Dinah’s car. After taking off her helmet, Helena looked around. They weren’t in a particularly nice part of the city. Renee and Dinah headed for a door at the corner of the block. The place looked simply strange. Only a big, bright, pink-colored neon sign of a letter “Q” adorned the front. Helena couldn’t be more certain that she’d regret entering that place. But how could she turn away? Dinah walked in, and Renee stayed behind, holding the door open for her.

The first thing Helena hears, under the loud music and the background and confusing noise, is a high-pitched voice basically yelling their way.

“Montoya! Canary! You’ve brought me someone new? Ugh, she smells sad and European, I love her already!”

There was a woman behind a counter, she was somewhat tall but not more than Helena. She had blonde hair with the tips colored blue and pink. She was even paler than Helena but apparently she made up for it with obnoxiously bright lipstick and clothes, which included a shiny yellow monster of an overall over a pink top. Helena had never seen anybody like her, hadn’t felt such strong power in a room since she left Sicily. While the woman hoisted herself over the counter and stared at them like a puppy happy to see their owner come back home, Helena glanced around her. The place was as messy as its oner. Too many colors and styles mixed up. A menu of spicy food on a side of the counter, and the weirdest cocktails names Helena had ever read in the other. Only one table was occupied by four women drinking, talking and paying them no mind, a bunch of rollerskates under their table. Moving her focus back to the women around her, Helena took notice of the stranger still studying her, Dinah still looking at her with a frown, and Renee, for some reason, looking deeply uncomfortable.

“This time I don’t know how to go about introductions…” Renee mumbled, “You’re both going to freak out, I just know it.”

“Come on, doll. Just blurt it out!” the blonde literally whined, and Helena rose her eyebrows in surprise.

Renee sighed, “Harley Quinn, meet Helena Bertinelli.”

Renee hadn’t been wrong.

They reacted simultaneously. Harley gasped so loud she women by the table in the corner turned to stare at her. Helena took a step back and her face contorted in absolute shock. Her hand twitched by her side and she couldn’t believe that in her haste she went out without her crossbow.

“From the Bertinelli massacre!” Harley shirked. She remembered it clear as if it had happened yesterday. It had been such a scandal. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence that vampire hunters did more than being annoying chasing them around, and it was just as unusual that the hunters ended up actually dead. It was a complicated balance. Harley personally had always found the existence of hunters to be simply entertaining. Usually, not anybody dared kill a hunter, let alone murder an entire family of them, and even less the most powerful of the city. The story was made even juicier by the rumors that they never found the body of one of the Bertinelli’s. _Well, I found it_ , Harley smiled, _it’s tall, hot, angry and right in my home._

“Harley Quinn,” Helena whispered the name, it felt wrong on her tongue. Harley used to be a pain in the ass of the Bertinelli family. Constantly on the top of their list, never caught and even worse, she constantly mocked them in her clever escapes and ridiculous sabotaging of their plans. When she was a kid Helena found the character to be hilarious and she secretly laughed at the adults’ frustration caused by the erratic monster. But now they were looking at each other eye to eye. Somewhere deep inside her, Helena knew that she _should_ try to kill Harley Quinn. But then again, she also should try to kill Renee and… herself.

A moment of awkward silence followed, and Harley finally said, “That is childhood trauma right there.”

Helena sighed and looked down. For some reason, she couldn’t look at any of them in the eye anymore, couldn’t even find the words to answer. Harley was right, wasn’t she?

The other probably noticed her discomfort, and surprisingly, the one to break the silence then was Dinah, “Okay, Montoya, I think we all need an explanation.” Renee laughed.

“Why the fuck did you bring me here, Renee?” Helena almost begged. She was tense. Everywhere she went in Gotham, everything she did, reminded her of something of her past in the most painful ways imaginable. Everything felt wrong.

“Because I needed to talk to you, seriously. And I figured we’d all be safer here. With Harley around, I doubt you’ll put up some shit.”

“Wait, Harley is stronger?” Dinah asked. She had been careful enough in her voice to not sound so surprised, but the fact that she had to ask made Helena feel something good inside.

“Darling, I’m the _worst_ this city has to offer,”

“You look about the same age though.”

Harley smiled at Dinah and walked closer to her. That big smile of hers, showing way too much teeth, including the unusually sharp canines. It was a little unsettling. Helena tensed when she saw Harley put a hand on Dinah’s shoulder, fingers tickling the side of her neck.

“Yeah well sue me for staying hot after all this time,” Harley playfully rolled her eyes but then she was back to being all smiles. She gestured at her own body, “It takes a lot to keep up this sexy body, babe. Would you like to help me out one day?” She batted her eyelashes at Dinah and tilted her head.

Helena surprised herself by tensing up, feeling a strange urge to jump in a do whatever it took to get Harley to leave Dinah alone. But before she could react and those two would notice her intentions, Dinah laughed.

“Stay away from me, you creep” Dinah shrugged Harley off her and the blonde pouted, her eyes filled with mirth. Renee only laughed at their banter.

With that small scare dealt with, Helena had a moment to process Harley’s words. To maintain that body, that youth, for so long, it certainly would take a lot, a lot of feeding herself. Helena frowned in disgust. It was so evident that the others couldn’t have missed it. 

Harley turned toward her with a frown, “Are you okay over there?” But then as if she had been struck by lighting, Harley gasped again and jumped a bit in her place, “But what kind of shitty host am I?! Ladies let me offer you a drink alright?”

The blonde was reaching the counter again when she heard Helena grumble, “I want nothing from you.”

Harley stopped in her tracks and she looked at Helena, who avoided her gaze, “ _Ouch!_ ” she said, exaggerating the gesture with a hand on her chest, “I’ll take that as a challenge though. The drink’s on me.” She pointed a finger at Helena and a second later swung herself over the counter again.

Meanwhile, Dinah and Renee had made themselves comfortable in a booth. Helena hesitated. She really, really should leave. But a moment later she was sitting beside Renee, and trying to avoid Dinah’s eyes across from her. The singer wasn’t scowling anymore, but those inquisitive eyes made Helena all the more nervous.

“You know, Bertinelli,” Renee addressed her again, “You still don’t tell me what you’ve been up to these past hundred years, but something tells me you’re a bit old-school, am I right?” She didn’t receive an answer from Helena though, so she continued. “A drink will do you good. You don’t have to go around preying on pretty young ladies every night-”

Helena slammed a hand on the table in front of them, “I don’t do that!” she yelled, even though she most definitely did something like that to sustain herself every other night, “and I don’t want a fucking drink.”

“Too sad, because drinks are here!” Harley said in a way too cheerful voice. She placed different drinks all over the table, apparently familiar with the preferences of Dinah and Renee. Helena couldn’t help but notice that other than Dinah’s drink, the others were of deep red color. Well, fuck, it made sense now. Helena frowned at the drink in front of her and resisted the urge to throw the glass across the room. However, the sight of it, the unmistakable smell, it all had her gripping the edge of the table until her knuckles were white and she feared she’d break it.

“Helena, are you okay?” Dinah asked, despite her best efforts to be disgusted by the creatures surrounding her, she couldn’t just ignore the look of utter revulsion in Helena’s face.

Being addressed by Dinah certainly took Helena by surprise. she snapped her head up and stared at them. She was a second away from fleeing the scene when Harley spoke again.

“Hold up, hold up, I think I’m figuring out some shit about our new friend here,” she leaned back against the seat while all eyes turned to her. “I remember the Bertinelli’s. Self-righteous, deeply religious and even more deeply disgusted by our means of survival. We have sitting here a traumatized kid that now embodies every little thing she was raised to hate and taught to destroy. You’re not disgusted by me and my drinks sweetheart, it’s about you, your values and your _irresistible_ thirst for-”

The last of Harley’s words were interrupted by Helena’s hand pressing down on her neck. “Wow!” Harley coughed and raised both hands beside her head. The brunette had jumped from her seat and her entire body was shaking with a fury she couldn’t control.

“How do you know all that about me?!” Helena demanded.

Harley only smiled though. “Press down hard, babe, I dare you.” She strained her neck against Helena’s disconcerting her. When she saw Helena hesitate, Harley made a movement almost animalistic, opening her mouth and snapping her jaw closed, her teeth clashing against each other and her fangs making a formal appearance.

“Sit down, kid,” Renee said, tugging harshly at Helena’s leather jacket to get her to sit down again

When she was back in her seat Helena turned to Renee and repeated her question, “ _How_ does she know?!” 

“A thousand years of experience, Helena! Now calm down,” Renee took a sip of her own drink.

“Hey!” Harley protested, “I also got a fucking Ph.D. like three times now!” She also got started on her drink, and then turned to Helena with a smile. “Don’t worry, Bertinelli, I wouldn’t hurt a hair on your pretty head. Now drink! I swear it’s mostly legal,” she rolled her eyes when Helena raised a skeptical eyebrow, “Look, my providers get it legally, and I might steal a little bit from them, but the legal part remains! If it’s lawful enough for Renee over here then you’re fine!” she waved a hand and slurped loudly from the pink straw of her drink.

Helena looked at the red beverage in front of her. She would have tried to protest again, but her brain was no longer able to form coherent words. She knew Harley wasn’t wrong in her guesses. Helena purposefully fed the bare minimum, only to stay alive. She found the practice of feeding on blood to be simply horrific and just thinking about her need to do that to survive made her want to die. She could go days without it, not without consequences though. She’d start feeling weak, her senses would dim, her mood would be more explosive than usual. That night, she wasn’t even sure if she’d try to feed herself, but with the scent all around her on that table, she didn’t have the strength to fight it anymore.

She picked up the glass in front of her and took a sip, which turned into another and another. She tried to hold herself together, to act stronger, but the feeling was intoxicating and it made her entire body experience a high that she couldn’t just put into words. Her eyes closed involuntarily while she delighted on the taste and relaxed on her seat. In the back of her mind, she could hear the women around her continued talking, but she didn’t pay them any mind. Distantly, she heard Harley and Renee explain to Dinah a little more about the Bertinelli family, the way they’d tried through their whole history to catch Harley, the way Renee started working for them when she was young and that’s how she befriended the little kid that was now sitting beside her, no longer little or a kid.

“The Bertinelli’s were the most powerful, wealthiest, the longest-standing family of… We were sort of assistants, not part of the family, but…” Renee’s voice sounded as if far away while Helena enjoyed her drink, she only got bits and pieces of her speech. “Cute kid, quiet, definitely smiled more back then, I don’t remember seeing her angry… Of course, then Harley burnt the whole place down, as usual… Afterward, nobody heard anything else about it.”

Helena sighed, looking down at the empty glass in front of her, briefly remembering drinking it. She rolled her eyes in response to something Renee said that sounded overly dramatic, but then it took her longer than usual to realize Renee was calling her name.

“Hey! Bertinelli!” Renee snapped her fingers in front of Helena. “I _said_ , now that you don’t look all ready for murder, can you humor us with the tale of your great escape?”

“Humor?” Helena frowned. There was nothing funny about her story. But the delicious taste of her drink was still soothing her every nerve. “I don’t want to say the whole story,” Helena mumbled, “I can barely focus on talking right now.”

“Come on, gorgeous, you’re a Gotham legend!” Harley insisted.

Helena remained silent for a few seconds, in a way she was shifting through her memories, trying to find out a way to say as little as possible, in a way that didn’t pain her too much, but made enough sense to be done with it.

“They hired many people to get the job done that day. Not everyone was loyal to the boss though. Including one Italian guy that decided he wanted to kidnap a little girl, and kill her, but _not really_ …” She shook her head trying to focus, “He bit me. He turned me into something like him and took me to Sicily. I was raised there, by him, his father and brother. They’re old, powerful blood. And I spent the next hundred years training. I trained my body, I perfected my skills, I learned from them and I made a plan. When I was ready, I came back to Gotham, and I won’t leave until I’ve killed every single monster involved in the murder of my family.”

When she was done talking, Helena sighed. It didn’t feel so bad, to give up an ounce of the weighted that she had carried on top of her for a century. She looked around the table again. Harley looked fascinated by the story, Dinah was serious but not so angry anymore, and Renee was smiling. Renee was sitting on the edge of her seat and when she figured it was appropriate she spoke up.

“And _that’s_ where we come in,” Renee whispered almost reverently. “How many have you killed so far, huh?”

“One or two.”

“One or two,” Renee repeated in a mocking tone that made the others laugh, “Well, those one or two guys you’ve killed worked for Roman Sionis. He comes from a big, old, powerful family. He’s older and you and me, but not older than Harley. He’s rich, he owns the Black Mask Club, and he’s fucking annoying. I _hate_ that guy.”

“Okay…” Helena said. She stared sadly at the empty cup in front of her and then at the faces on the other side of the table. Harley and Dinah looked like they already knew this part of the story.

“I’ve figured out that something sketchy is going on at the Black Mask Club. They serve drinks, of course, like here, but there’s something else going on in there, something wrong. However-” Renee was interrupted by Dinah.

“ _However,_ you don’t actually have proof, they barely let you inside the club anymore, and Helena killed your only contact,” Dinah looked very pleased with herself, she smiled and held up a finger after each statement.

Helena couldn’t hold back the chuckle that made its way out of her lips. She didn’t want Dinah to think she was laughing at her, and she didn’t want to admit her chuckle was a natural reaction to seeing Dinah smile like that for the first time. So, she cleared her throat and asked, “I did?”

“Oh yeah,” Renee sighed, “You put an arrow through the throat of the only guy willing to sell information.”

That put a smile on Helena’s lips, but it was quickly wiped away when she heard Harley and Dinah exclaim at once, “ _You’re the Crossbow Killer?!_ ”

“I’m not the Crossbow Killer!” Helena exclaimed, her anger came back full force, but she reigned it in and, as she had practiced for years, said, “They call me… Huntress.”

“Who does?” Harley blurted out, “Wait - Oh! For the family of hunters but now-”

“We _get it_ , Harley,” Renee interrupted her, “Yeah, we all love the irony. Can we focus now?”

It was Dinah’s turn to chuckle, which made Helena smile. She had time enough to tell herself that she was smiling only at Renee’s comment, but then her eyes met Dinah’s smiling ones and something she’d thought dead inside her was suddenly alive.

“My point is, I have a feeling Roman doesn’t get his supply legally. And someone should do something about it,” Renee stated.

“Why should that someone be you, Renee?” Helena tentatively asked.

“‘Cause I fucking want to. I’ve been part of the police a couple of times-”

“And you keep getting suspended,” Dinah reminded her.

“Fuck off! I want to take down this guy, okay? He’s doing something wrong, and you wouldn’t let that happen right in front of you, would you Canary? If you liked and trusted Sionis you wouldn’t be here. _You_ are my contact at the Black Mask Club.”

While Renee talked, Dinah looked ready to protest at the end of each sentence, but then the next one would disarm her argument, leaving Dinah silent. She didn’t look pleased, but she didn’t put up a fight.

“What about me, Montoya?” Harley asked, “What’s in it for me, huh? I lived under the shadow of Mister J. for centuries! I finally have a nice, stable life and-”

“You don’t want a nice, stable life, Quinn,” Renee actually laughed, “You’d take any chance to disturb the status quo of Gotham City.”

“Damn, you got me there”

“You know everyone in this city, you have every contact we could possibly need, and you’re the only one who shapeshifts into a fucking hyena.”

The mention of shapeshifting, a skill she still wasn’t capable of, startled Helena. And Harley’s question stuck with her, she threw it back at Renee with her own words.

“And me?” Helena wondered out loud, “I still don’t get what you want from me.”

Rene studied her for a second, and replied easily. “We have the same targets, sweetheart. The men you’re killing work for Sionis. I bet he’s not happy about that. It’s only a matter of time before someone else picks up on your identity. You’ll need us. And yeah, I think we could use the help of a Huntress.”

Her words, instead of convincing Helena, had the opposite effect. She remembered the stupid piece of paper with the bloody words scattered on it she had burned that day. If someone figured out her identity she just needed to kill them. She didn’t need anybody, and they were probably better off without her anyway.

“I work alone,” Helena stated a single time and swiftly stood up.

As she walked away, Helena heard Renee’s disappointed sigh. When she got to the door she stopped briefly and glanced back. Renee wasn’t even looking at her. Harley was giving a friendly wave and shouted, “I’ll still give you a discount next time!”, but what got her attention was Dinah. She kept doing that thing where she simply existed and Helena found her to be completely overwhelming. Helena made the inhumane effort to tear her eyes away from Dinah’s face, proceeded to fumble trying to get the door of Harley’s weird establishment to open, and finally made it out into the street on her way to her bike and as far away from there as possible. The last thing she heard from them was Harley’s yell, “We also have a roller derby on the weekends!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Please let me know what you think, what you like or hate about this and what you'd like to see the next chapters  
> As always, you can find me on tumblr @afterlaughy


	3. Aiming like a laser pointer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took longer than expected, but i swear i'm already working on the next chapter. thank you so much to everyone who's reading and leaving comments i love you  
> again, thank you to my very own vampire counselor @Elias319 !! you're the best  
> enjoy some helena "angsty vampire" bertinelli

It had been a long day running the diner, and Harley really just wanted to go home to Bruce, the light of her life. But of course in Gotham’s supernatural scene, that was too much to ask for. Something always went wrong. Maybe some fledgling bared his fangs at the wrong person, or one of Joker’s thugs wanted to target her to gain the Clown Prince’s favor. Sometimes it was as simple as needing to order more vodka for the bar. Regardless, she never went home when she wanted to. This time, she found herself in the dark alleyway behind her multifunctional place of food, drinks and roller derby, right in the middle of an unwanted argument. While Renee Montoya and Dinah Lance looked on from the doorway, Harley tried to stand her ground in front of a guy that was about twice her size. She must’ve screwed him over somehow. 

“So… what did I do to you?” Harley asked, her tone genuinely confused.

“If you mess with Mr. Sionis, you mess with me.”

The big guy was smiling widely, which made him considerably more disturbing. The woman sighed.

“I did nothing to Romey, now go and-”

“You’re taking his clientele!”

He was too close. So close that when he yelled at her, she could feel a few drops of spittle land on her cheek. Wiping it off and rolling her eyes, she scoffed.

“What clientele?! My place is deserted!” Before the man could respond, the crowd behind them exploded in cheers. Harley’s shoulders fell and she groaned, “Oh crap.” Well, so much for a deserted place. Plus, she’d just missed something cool because of this guy.

“This is just a warning, Miss Quin,” He threatened, poking a finger to Harley’s chest, “At least for now.”

_Of course, it was just a warning_ , Harley thought, _he wouldn’t try anything by himself, I could eat this little bitch for breakfast._ However, she didn’t appreciate the disrespect of being touched by his filthy finger. She considered for a split second doing something about it, but was it worth it? Perhaps something even more fun was waiting right around the corner. As the man started walking away, and Harley watched him thoughtfully, she was studying their surroundings. Suddenly, Harley smiled.

“Hey! One last thing… you should be careful out there.”

He had the nerve to laugh at her. Right in the middle of the street, he turned to glance at her one last time, “Of what? Of _you_?”

“Yes! But not exclusively…”

Not even a second later, an arrow had pierced through his neck. The arrowhead was made of silver, and it must have been doused in holy water, because his screams already mingled with the smell of burning flesh. He barely tried to react, both hands raising helplessly in front of him and an expression of absolute shock taking over his face and a gaping hole burned in his neck. A black bike had come full speed toward him, the owner having jumped off the bike mid-air, and the collision sent him tumbling down to the ground, groaning in pain. Harley was grinning ear-to-ear, but Renee and Dinah simply hissed at the disturbing sight. He didn’t get a chance to recover. The driver of the bike, Helena Bertinelli, stalked towards him, enjoying these last few moments of guaranteed success.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked, she always did.

So far, none of her victims had been quick, or alive enough to connect the dots and recognize her. She didn’t care. The spark desperation trying to make sense of what had happened, and the look of fear in their eyes when they realized they were helpless, Helena knew that look very well, it was all she wanted to see in them. No one moved to stop her when she pierced his dead heart with a silver dagger. And just like that, one more name to cross on her list.

Helena stood back up and took off her helmet, wiping the blade on her victim's shirt to clean off the blood. She tried to repress the joy she could feel bubbling up at the sight. Being raised by a family of Italian Catholic vampire hunters, she had been taught that the sick thrill vampires felt from taking a life was perverted. The Bertinelli's understood that killing the undead wasn’t exactly like taking a life, and yet she could remember her father coming home after a kill with a sad, solemn face. He would pray for forgiveness after every kill. And she knew, objectively, that her joy was instinctual. Biological. Despite that, it felt like a betrayal to her family. So when she smiled at the sight of the lifeless body at her feet, it was accompanied by a pang of shame. She was almost glad when her moment of revelry was interrupted by Harley’s clapping.

“Crossbow killer!” Harley exclaimed, raising her hands up in the air.

Helena immediately scowled, tightening her hold on her helmet. She saw Renee and Dinah walk closer.

Renee looked at Helena and smiled, “I told you our paths would cross again. Same targets.”

She sounded smug, and it irritated Helena. Renee might be right but, “ _This_ ,” Helena vaguely gestured around them, “means nothing.” She knew then that she had to leave as soon as possible. She couldn’t let Renee get into her head, convince her she could do more with her life than kill the monsters that killed her family. She couldn’t accept another drink from Harley, let loose and reveal another part of her tragic life story. Even worse, she couldn’t spare herself one look at Dinah’s eyes and lose her focus and stumble a little bit when getting into her bike, letting her helmet fall from her hand, and curse herself for making a fool of herself in front of the others. Except, maybe she did do one of those things. After picking up her helmet from her ground and shakily getting back up into her bike, Helena sped away from the scene, knowing the three other women were watching her leave.

* * *

Helena had been looking forward to going home. Putting distance between the temptations she’d recently encountered for her mind, body, and heart was the best she could do. However, of course, her plans would be ruined once more. The Bertinelli mansion was distanced from any main roads, and barely within city limits. Back in the day, it had been glorious, a small paradise and one of the most secure places in Gotham. All for nothing, Helena thought bitterly. Now? Well, looked like a haunted house, and that was being generous. After all, there was nothing keeping the place safe except for Helena’s presence. But when she left Gotham, she knew that the mansion wouldn’t fare well. Not only was the mansion a lucrative target for looters, but it also had to withstand the notoriously freezing winters of Gotham city. More than a few pipes had burst since she’d left. As she cruised her bike up the long driveway, she spotted burnt foliage and dark powder on the paved brick. Immediately on high alert, she scanned her surroundings for a threat.

The grass was brown in most places and it grew wildly, unattended. But there was enough of it for someone to go and set fire to it, leaving a trace of ashes that clearly spelled the words “ **GO AWAY** ”. Helena stood in the driveway, in the middle of the ominous message. Her hands pulled into tight fists and her breathing coming out raggedly. Who the fuck dared try to scare her? To threaten her? She looked around and felt her fury picking up, but found nothing to take it out on. She stormed into the house and her eyes traveled around the rooms thoroughly, with the exception of the room where everything had been stolen from her. She could never look at that room for too long. Everything around the house was completely normal, in perfect place, untouched, and it pissed her off. She desperately wanted to burn something again, to destroy something. Her mind got carried away in violent visions that would soothe her anger. Maybe she should try to impulsively go out after the next name on her list even though she wasn’t ready. Killing literally anybody would help her feel substantially better. Perhaps she could go out and meet someone new, feed herself…

“No!”, Helena yelled at the empty room, “No, no, no, no” she repeated, her voice going through extreme high and lows where she screamed and shakily whispered that single word over and over again. She fell to the ground kneeling and punched the floor with a fist. Frozen in that position as she tried to get a hold of her emotions. This wasn’t her. She wasn’t a monster that could go out and steal the blood of an innocent person to sustain herself. She was Helena Bertinelli, she was a hunter. She was _Huntress_ , and she had trained for a hundred years to become the perfect killing machine that knew nothing but how to achieve her revenge. She wasn’t emotional, that could get in the way of her plans. She wasn’t a slave to the _disgusting_ needs of her body. They could get in the way of her plans. She wasn’t allowed to lose control. She also didn’t _need_ help, not exactly, but…

* * *

The next night, Helena parked her bike outside of Harley’s place. She took her time getting down from her bike though. She wasn’t sure that this was a great idea. She could probably figure out who was threatening her alone, maybe she didn’t need to take a shortcut and ask Renee again. Plus, she could feel Dinah was once again nearby, and this made Helena nervous in ways she really didn’t want to analyze. Eventually, though, she walked into the place. It was as random as she remembered it. It looked like a diner, a bar, and an amusement park all at once. It had enough glitter and neon pink to give her a headache. Still, what stood out among the mess was Dinah Lance’s smile from the other side of the counter.

“Helena,” Dinah greeted her with a smirk. Helena took notice that Dinah didn’t call her Crossbow Killer or used her last name, since there were other people scattered around the place, drinking, eating, or playing on arcade machines that looked like they’d been scavenged from the Gotham Junkyard and somehow weren’t completely out of place in there.

“Hi,” Helena croaked out, “Hello, I… Dinah, how are you?” 

Helena gritted her teeth, realizing she stuttered, but Dinah seemed only amused, which further confused Helena, who had no idea when the other woman stopped being angry at her or why.

“I’m fine,” Dinah replied slowly, “How are you?” 

She bit her lip to keep herself from smiling at the sight of Helena’s stunned expression at being returned the question. Of course, she noticed Helena’s eyes then moving to look at her lips, so she stopped biting on it and subsequently noticed Helena’s blush. She scolded herself internally for noticing every little thing Helena did. “Did you want a _drink_?”

Dinah’s offer completely changed the mood. Her voice had changed, it turned cold and unfriendly. Gone where timid questions and playful smiles and curious glances at each other’s lips. Helena realized Dinah didn’t make the offer out of kindness. She was taunting Helena. It was obvious from the way she said the word “drink” and the sudden coldness in her eyes. It took Helena by surprise but she tried to take it in stride. She was proud, she was strong, she didn’t need a disgusting mixture of booze and blood to keep herself on her two feet. She straightened her posture and kept her chin up, confidently walked to the counter and met Dinah’s eyes.

“I’m looking for Renee, or maybe Harley,” Helena said, her voice firm.

“I see… You won’t even talk to a simple mortal like me, huh?”

“No! I’m not- That’s not- That’s so not what I meant,” Helena’s attitude flew out the window, and although her voice rose in anger it was mostly at herself, for giving the wrong impression and also fumbling with her words again. “Fuck. Maybe I should come back later.”

“Hey, it’s okay! I’m joking,” Dinah intervened and waved it all off with a flick of her wrist. It was quick enough that Helena stopped in her tracks and didn’t walk out of the place right away. “Come on, sit. You know I don’t bite, right?” Now that got Helena’s attention. She stared at Dinah with an eyebrow raised until the woman behind the counter burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” Dinah chuckled, “I just love telling that joke to you vamps.” Helena surprised herself by letting out a small chuckle, less at the joke and more as a natural reaction at seeing Dinah’s eyes light up in amusement. “I can seriously get you a drink if you want, I also work here,” Dinah added.

Well, _that_ was news. What was a human doing working at an underground club for Gotham’s supernatural? She figured it wasn’t her business, though, and the mention of the damned “drinks” brought a deep frown to Helena’s face. However, Helena dragged herself to one of the stools in front of the counter and grumbled out, “I don’t _want_ a drink.”

“Yeah? Well, you look like you need one.”

She probably did. When was the last time she fed? Long enough for her hands to shake and her stomach to knot, but she was having trouble thinking coherently enough to make a good guess.

Dinah’s tone and the way she moved behind the counter, handling glasses and mixing whatever with blood, the only substance Helena was familiar with, all showed that Dinah was completely comfortable in this environment, it showed some level of expertise even. She didn’t even glance again at Helena as she prepared the drink. When the finished product was set in front of Helena, she stared at it with undisguised hatred. It was the closest thing to seeing her reflection.

“Let me tell you something,” Dinah whispered. She’d noticed something about Helena, something she couldn’t ignore. She leaned forward on the counter, close to the dark-haired woman and continued in a secretive tone, “I’ll judge you _less_ for drinking that than for biting someone’s neck.”

Helena shuddered. For one, Dinah was too close and she took over all of Helena’s senses. Her voice was so close, the words were like a caress on her cheek. She was so close, Helena was pretty sure she’d never be able to forget Dinah’s scent now. And the whole image of her… Dinah, her arms resting on the counter, her brown eyes full of secrets and capable of demanding anything from her, the glow of her skin and the promise of its softness to the touch, multiple little pieces of gold gleaming under the lights… 

Hastily, Helena picked up the glass and took a good swallow of the red liquid. Whatever alcohol was mixed with it was nothing compared to the unmistakable taste of blood. There was nothing like it. As soon as the first drop made contact with Helena’s tongue it was like her whole body came alive, remembering who and what it was, and what for. It felt like her nerves were burning and she was freezing at once, in the best way. It was exhilarating. And after the first shock of ecstasy that came with it, came the most soothing experience Helena could remember feeling. It was like she became liquid too. 

After the first sip, she decided to pace herself. She put the glass down, savored the taste lingering on her lips and got comfortable on the stool. Dinah was still looking at her. A small frown was adorning her face, but she was silent, studying Helena. Helena, who hated to be looked at, impulsively decided to direct the attention elsewhere.

“How did you end up here?” she blurted out. Dinah only tilted her head in confusion, so Helena tried to find more words in the current haze of her thoughts. “I mean, you said you hated… them- us. I mean… But you work here and…” She interrupted herself with a new sip of her drink, hoping it would give her the strength to find better words or spare everyone’s time and kick herself out of there.

To her surprise, Dinah laughed. “Hey, vamps pay well,” She shrugged. “Plus, I would’ve ended up working for one anyway. They’re everywhere in this godforsaken city, you’re not all that special, Bertinelli,” Dinah winked at her, making Helena once again move to hide behind her glass.

Once she finished, Helena tried to pry more information out of the woman in front of her, though as soon as she said “But-” Dinah was interrupting her.

“Nope. Sorry. We’re done talking about me,” she said. Her voice was firm and left no room for debate. She had harshly closed a window that would show a glimpse into her life, into her more complex thoughts. Effortlessly shutting down the conversation about herself, Dinah kept working on little things behind the counter, cleaning glasses, wiping the counter, mindlessly rearranging stuff. When she looked at Helena again, her eyes were kind, not upset, and there was the ghost of a smile playing on her lips.

Still, Helena couldn’t help but mumble out an apology. “I’m sorry,” she groaned at herself, and once again tried to hide behind her drink, only to find out it was empty. She sighed in disappointment. She had seen an opportunity to hear how someone else coped with hating something they depended on… 

“What about you? How did you end up here?” Dinah asked suddenly. When she noticed Helena’s face of confusion - _she’d already told them the story, right? Murder, biting, Sicily, revenge_ \- Dinah explained, “I mean, today. You wanted something?”

“Right. Yes. Renee,” Helena nodded, “I wanted to speak to Renee.”

“Follow me,” Dinah replied. She quickly moved around the counter, unlike Harley who preferred to just jump over it, and started leading Helena to a door at the back. “It’s roller derby night.”

“Wait. That’s a _real_ thing then?”

Somehow, Helena’s blurted out question struck Dinah as incredibly funny. Helena didn’t react much beyond silently following Dinah. But her fists did tighten at her sides. An instant of sudden anger, was Dinah making fun of her? Another moment of being angry at herself, why did she enjoy Dinah’s laugh so much?

The door they crossed opened to a hallway that had a few doors on each side. Helena imagined that behind them there was the storage for food, alcohol and cleaning supplies. Although in a bar like this, there had to be some weird shit too. And how did they get the blood? Maybe they kept a fridge full of fresh blood in bottles, perhaps it came in bags, or even large containers. Helena had no idea how places like these worked, she had never visited one during her time in Sicily. She was thankful that she had been turned by old, powerful blood. She could last much longer than most, and it helped her avoid feeding too much, too constantly, had she been a younger, weaker vampire. Still, since the old Sicilian vampires were pretty traditional in many aspects of their lives, Helena had missed out on most of the novelties in life as a supernatural being in the twenty-first century. This meant that, as much as she violently hated herself for it, all she knew was to lie and lure an innocent woman just to bite her neck, steal part of her life. She wouldn’t mind giving that up completely in exchange for sweet drinks prepared by Dinah here. But… If she were to be completely honest though, a deep, primal part of her missed the feeling of her teeth sinking into soft flesh, the overwhelming scents and the incomparable taste and yes, maybe even the thrill of it. But, she kicked that part of herself deep into a dark corner of her mind, and willed it to stay silent.f she could, she’d have killed that part of herself long ago. 

In the hallway, loud, chaotic noises made themselves present. When Dinah opened the last door, it all exploded around Helena. She barely glanced inside before turning back to Dinah with a horrified expression. 

Dinah laughed. She leaned in and looked around briefly, then pointed Helena in the right direction. “Look, Renee is over there. You’ll be fine. I have to get back to the front, okay?”

Helena wasn’t sure exactly what compelled her to reach out and grab Dinah’s arm before she walked away, and she wasn’t completely sure of what she wanted to say until the words were tumbling out of her mouth, but she said, “Dinah, I might- I mean, can I- I will… come back. Maybe, I think, for- you know.”

Dinah’s eyes snapped to her arm, to Helena’s hand holding her. It was strange. It was a gentle touch and Helena must have tried her hardest to be delicate with it. But before Dinah could make up her mind about shrugging that hand off, Helena herself took her hand away as if she’d been burned. Dinah stared at Helena with wonder in her eyes. Every possible, angry or mocking reaction she would have thought of flew out of her mind the minute she locked eyes with Helena. This creature standing in front of her was… one of a kind. Dinah had never met anybody like Helena, vampire or person, and she was right there looking so vulnerable and Dinah didn’t understand it.

“Helena,” she said, “You can come back, okay? Any time you want. I’d like to see you again.”

At first, Dinah’s voice was serious, but she finished it off with a small smile, and started walking away down the hallway they came from. Helena just stared and nodded, even though she knew Dinah couldn’t see her. And she tried not to think, not to scold herself for whatever she’d just done. But even if she refused to analyze what had just happened, the fact remained that Dinah was the only normal, human, person that Helena had had an honest conversation with in years. The fact that Dinah embodied humanity as a whole, or at least the part of humanity that Helena thought she’d lost, well, that was too big a thought to even begin to consider at the moment.

So Helena just walked into one more strange place in her life. Apparently, Harley’s place was connected to a large warehouse that she’d adapted into Gotham’s best roller derby. The space was full, there was music, cheers, lights, and drinks going around. It was annoyingly overwhelming and Helena had to make a big effort to throw it all into the background and concentrate her focus only on the strictly necessary. For example, Renee Montoya leaning against a column not far from her.

“Renee,” Helena called out when she was closed enough.

“Helena! Hey kid. What’s up?”

Renee had a drink in her hand. She looked relaxed and maybe happy to see Helena, who frowned at being called a kid by Renee even after a hundred years. But she remembered her priorities and went straight to the point.

“Could you not make a huge deal out of it? I might need a hand with something,” Helena spoke closely to Renee, avoiding the eyes of everyone around them. When she saw the other woman nod she continued, “I am sure someone else _knows_ … about me. I need to find out who.”

The shorter woman finished her drink at once, and looked thoughtful then, a little excited, but to her credit, she didn’t comment on the fact that, as she had predicted, Helena effectively came to her for help.

“I’ll figure it out,” Renee replied confidently, “I have contacts, and Harley as well. We got you.” Renee took notice of Helena’s nod of acknowledgement, but decided she’d save them both the pain of saying thanks or arguing about needing help, and she continued. “Why don’t you stay for the show? It’s about to get fun. Take a look.”

Following Renee’s tilt of her head, Helena’s eyes moved to the center of the room. There was a large circular sort of stage, where a group of women was moving around in roller skates. At first, Helena thought it looked silly and meaningless. But then she noticed the women pushing each other, getting rougher and rougher with each other, and as if that hadn’t picked her interest enough, she finally recognized the blonde hair with dyed pink and blue tips. Harley was in the middle of it all, throwing the nastiest punches around. Helena looked on, cringing every time that Harley’s fist met someone’s face. Renee laughed at the insanity of it all, finding it entertaining as long as she looked on from a distance. However, when a few seconds later she turned her head to talk to Helena again, there was no sight of her anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you liked it!  
> please let me know what you think, kudos, comments, come yell at me on tumblr @afterlaughy  
> thanks for reading!


	4. Poor Little Vampire Baby

It was meant to happen in one more shady alleyway of Gotham. Helena had stalked the next name on her list for days until she was confident she knew his schedule by heart. It wasn’t very difficult. Apparently, he’d made a life for himself beyond the lowly hitman hired to slaughter her family a hundred years ago, to a semi-decent businessman with a tight schedule and daily meetings. He was ridiculously easy for Helena to track. However, and she swore she would just start expecting it, _nothing_ went according to plan.

It was still daylight, the sun just starting to set, and according to the clock, the man would be arriving any minute now. Helena had parked her bike across the street. She was sitting in it hunched over, with her crossbow hidden under her long coat and her helmet still on. She was thankful the people in Gotham didn’t bat an eye when they saw someone so strange just casually parked in the middle of the street.

She knew that her guy arrived at the same shady alleyway every day at the same hour, waited for around five to twenty minutes until a very young, seemingly unreliable, clueless, inexperienced business partner arrived, accepted some money and then both of them left. Even just one minute would have been enough for Helena to get her job done. Hell, she’d managed to kill targets in just a few seconds several times. All it took was a well-placed bolt. But it just so happened that the one day she chose to pull off her plan, they did things differently.

Before her target arrived, and for the first time since she’d been studying their schedule, the other guy arrived there first. Unlucky witness and nothing else, hopefully, Helena told herself. She knew that if she let this opportunity go, there might not be another day, there was a chance this would be the last day her target followed his routine. Nothing was set in stone. She _had_ to take her chance. She could take risks. The risk, however, suddenly outnumbered her.

When the guy showed up, he had another man, a bodyguard perhaps, go with him carrying the briefcase containing the money. Helena sighed. She tightened her hold on her weapon of choice and the handle of her bike. She made a quick assessment of the situation. She was a tactical person, usually working from strategy more than gut feeling, but fuck did she want to kill that guy. She’d had nightmares with his face, among a dozen more, for the better part of a century. She’d stalked him until she could recognize his scent and the back of his head form a crowd of hundreds. She did not just want him dead, she _needed_ to see him dead and to kill him herself so that in each and every one of his pain-induced screams her family would be avenged.

The three men were talking in the middle of the alleyway when a sharp arrow pierced through the neck of her target. The reactions were immediate. The first guy that had been waiting, tried to run but didn’t know where to. While he hesitated the bodyguard ran full speed in her direction, clearly having no problem figuring out where the shot had come from. Helena had been waiting for it. She jumped off her bike and met him in the middle, jamming a silver knife doused in holy water in his gut, just like the arrowhead in the other man’s neck. While the bodyguard fell to his knees, groaning at the agonizing, burning pain in his stomach, Helena kept running. She saw the younger guy still hesitating, considering if it was worth it to fight her, and without doubting herself she shot her crossbow at him. Her shot wasn’t lethal, she aimed at his leg. She just wanted him out of her way, he wasn’t a target nor a threat. He fell to his knees and she was certain he wouldn’t try anything against her. This wasn’t his battle.

Helena tried to run towards her target, who had yanked the arrow of his neck and was trying to escape. It was useless, but she wanted to be there, looking into his eyes as he died. She tried to chase him, but she felt someone coming at her. She didn’t finish turning around when the wounded bodyguard stabbed her left side. He had taken the knife from his own stomach, and while there wasn’t much holy water left on the blade Helena groaned in pain. They both fell to the ground. He was doing worse than her, and when she kicked him he fell away from her.

Relieved for a moment, Helena yanked the knife from her body and stifled a cry. She closed her eyes tightly, knowing that she could allow herself a simple second to acknowledge her pain and then move on. However, when she opened her eyes and tried to find her target, what she saw almost made her gasp. He was stumbling down the alley, still trying to get away, but then there was somebody else. Somebody who kicked him right in his neck and since he was so weak he fell right down to the floor. That’s when Dinah picked up the arrow lying on the ground and with an angry groan slammed it back into his neck, finishing Helena’s job. Helena would have kept looking, but the sounds behind her were too distracting.

When she looked to her side, Helena found Renee was holding the young guy with an arm around his throat and a hand clutching the arrow still stuck in his shoulder.

“I won’t ask again, who do you work for?” Renee was asking him with a voice that was terrifyingly calm.

“I told you, lady, I’m just a driver!” the boy complained.

He nearly started crying when Renee lightly twisted the arrow. “Fine, _driver_ , are you going to cooperate?” Renee asked and he whined in response.

Helena couldn’t keep looking though. She remembered the bodyguard, the biggest threat, but when she looked around for him she found him whimpering on the ground with an awful wound on his leg that Helena didn’t remember inflicting, trying to drag his limping body away… away from… yes, that was a fucking _hyena_.

The beast genuinely looked like it was having the time of her life. That one just _had_ to be Harley. She was jumping back and forth, thoroughly enjoying the way the man flinched every time she got closer. A hyena’s laugh, when it’s threatening you, can be the single most disturbingly terrifying thing one could hear.

Dinah was walking away from the dead vampire, Renee was finishing her interrogation of the young driver, and Helena was holding the wound on her side and watching, when the hyena finally decided to quit playing and jump on the man’s body. The hyena gave herself a feast. She avoided causing any major damage, prolonging her fun as much as possible. The result was an indescribable mixture of sounds, the man agonizing screams, the clashing of teeth, tearing of flesh and bone, and the splatter of blood… the blood… spilling everywhere… and the screaming…

Helena could only get herself as far as kneeling on the ground when she started vomiting. It was awful and unstoppable. Something inside her felt so rotten, maybe all of her. Her insides were burning, and her body was aching and she couldn’t stop throwing up. The worst part was having to hold herself up on her hands and not being able to cover her ears, as she once did so long ago under the deafening spray of semi-automatic rifles and the thud of her mother's body falling on top of her.

Jumping to action once more, Dinah and Renee dragged Helena’s trembling body away in one direction, while the hyena dragged her dinner piece by piece in the opposite direction. But Helena could still hear the awful sounds ringing in her head long after Harley was out of earshot, the wet and angry and desperate destruction of a body stuck replaying in her head.

* * *

The group arrived at Harley’s place not too long later. Renee lead the way, she had keys of the place for cases like this when Harley was a fucking hyena covered in blood and carrying pieces of a human body between her jaws, happily trotting behind them. Helena was, unsurprisingly, frowning the entire time. There were a lot of reasons for that frown, and just that fact was another good reason. One, she hated how her plans turned out. Two, she hated that others had seen her at a moment of weakness. Three, she would have preferred to go home and have a breakdown alone, but instead, she was being dragged up an obscure set of stairs that lead to Harley’s actual home above her business. Four, she hated that she hadn’t really put up a fight. Five, Dinah had a gentle yet strong hand on her back. Well, that technically wasn’t upsetting for Helena at all. The problem was how hyper-focused Helena was on that single touch.

She didn’t need help, she stubbornly thought. Sure, she hadn’t fed recently, she’d just been sick, and stabbed with her own silver dagger. But she was stronger than Dinah. However, the way that hand gently lead her where she needed to go, pushed her softly with only the fingertips, and used her thumb to lightly rub her back when they were waiting for a door to open… it all had Helena yearning to give in to a fantasy where she wasn’t that strong, where she didn’t have to be, because Dinah’s hand at her back could hold her, and she could let it happen.

Once they were inside the apartment, things moved in a blur. Helena was guided into a couch and then Dinah and Renee rushed away in opposite directions.

“I’ll go get her a drink,” Renee mumbled.

“I’ll go get the first aid kit,” Dinah announced as well.

Which earned her a snort from Renee, “She’s a vampire, she needs to feed, not a fucking bandaid.”

Dinah flipped her off and returned first to sit next to Helena. If Helena hadn’t been in great deals of pain she would’ve laughed at the playful bickering between those two. But instead, Helena flinched when Dinah gently pushed her hand away to look at her wound. It wasn’t terrible, but it did not look good at all.

“I’ve been told you won’t need stitches, but I’m gonna clean this up and cover it, okay?” Dinah asked softly, staring right into Helena’s eyes.

Helena hesitated, but since Dinah didn’t move at all and seemed to be waiting for a response, she reluctantly nodded. She instantly regretted a second later when Dinah first dabbed at the wound. Helena groaned in pain and flinched away, but Dinah’s persistent fingers kept working and when they hit a particularly sore spot it sent electrifying pain all up Helena’s nerves, resulting in her hissing loudly, baring her fangs and her entire body instinctively tensing to attack.

To Helena’s surprise, Dinah barely reacted. The woman took a sharp intake of breath and glanced at Helena’s sharp fangs, but she stayed silent, and didn’t move away. If there was a flicker of fear that might have shown in her eyes it disappeared as quickly as it came. They were sitting even closer, staring into each other eyes and neither one backed away. The tension was palpable, the pull and repulsion they simultaneously felt for each other were overwhelming, and a million questions would have been swarming their minds if they would have been able to think of anything but how close they were to each other.

“Here you go,” Renee broke their moment by holding a tall glass filled blood, red, intense, the best in Harley’s kitchen, just for Helena.

The wounded brunette looked at the glass startled. The smell had her salivating in anticipation. This time, she didn’t hesitate. Helena accepted the glass and started quickly drinking from it, as if she had just been dying of thirst.

Renee chuckled at her and sat down on a different couch opposite Helena and Dinah, she was holding a drink for herself. With Helena distracted with her glass, Dinah got a chance to get a lot of work done to the wound on her side, Helena only groaned faintly at the pain, but she was otherwise distracted by the usual ecstasies that came with the taste of blood.

Just as Helena finished the contents of the glass, a loud voice startled them all.

“Hey, guys! You’re all good?”

It was Harley. she was standing by the front door, completely naked, with bloodstains all over her face, hands, feet… all over her body and some in her hair.

Helena was thankful she wasn’t drinking at the moment she saw all that. Instead, she tightly closed her eyes and looked away for good measure, cursing at the naked blonde, “Fucking hell!” She was also surprised by the reaction of the other two women.

Dinah actually laughed at Harley, “Dude, you are disgusting.” She meant it, and she discreetly looked away as soon as possible, but she, somehow, still trusted and liked Harley… somewhat.

On the other hand, Renee chuckled quietly, mostly at Helena’s reactions. “Harley, for fuck’s sake please go take a shower,” she requested.

“I’m going, I’m going,” Harley raised her hands in surrender and slowly made her way towards her bathroom, “He was delicious, in case y’all were wondering, thank you very much.”

Once that was dealt with, Helena looked sadly at the empty glass in her hand and then up at Renee, “Can I have another one?” she asked.

With one more chuckle, Renee agreed and refilled Helena’s glass.

After taking one sip, Helena grimaced at the taste. She adored it, that was the worst part. “I hate this,” she couldn’t help but grumble out.

Renee and Dinah exchanged a look. So, _maybe_ they had discussed Harley’s probably accurate assessment of Helena’s troubled perception of herself. And maybe Harley loved a new psychological subject test, maybe Renee still held a soft spot for the awkward girl she met a century ago, and maybe Dinah was a bit captivated by the tall and angry vampire of beautiful eyes that was unlike any she’d ever met.

“What do you mean?” Renee asked as casually as she could manage, sipping her own drink.

“My plan failed, I had a moment of weakness, and I’m here drinking fucking blood just to keep myself remotely alive? What isn’t there to hate?!”

Helena’s answer was very clear, but still, it startled Dinah. She glanced at the wound she’d covered in Helena’s side, it had stopped bleeding the second Helena first took a sip of her drink, and Dinah wouldn’t have been that surprised if after Helena was done with that glass they removed the bandage and there was only a scar underneath. Dinah’s eyes got carried away then. Half of Helena’s torso was exposed, and although they were faint, close as she was, Dinah could see a handful of small scars scattered around the pale skin. They were small, they picked her curiosity, and her fingers itched in a desire to touch. Luckily, Renee’s voice woke her from her trance.

“Helena, I don’t think I’ve told you what happened to me after… we last saw each other, have I?”

_After my entire family was brutally murdered around me when I was a literal child? No, I believe you haven’t-_ Helena cut down her train of thought. She didn’t want to argue, she just wanted to revel in the feeling of the blood flowing down her throat. It was soothing, it was addictive, it was fucking delicious. So, instead of arguing, Helena took a moment to realize that Renee, when she was young and human, had been a sort of hunter, almost like the Bertinelli’s. She used to make a living out of killing vampires, and now she was one. A situation quite similar to Helena, and there was Renee, much more collected and confident on herself. Suddenly, Helena was very interested in Renee’s story. She nodded eagerly, until she remembered the actual question and shook her head, but just in case she added, “Tell me.”

Renee did exactly that.

“Not that you were thoughtful enough to ask, but the Bertinelli’s were deeply missed by some folk, I included. I was suddenly unemployed, and unprotected. I still carried with me the fantasy to hunt vampires for a living though, which only got me trouble that your family couldn’t take care of anymore,” Renee made a pause to take a sip of her drink, relished in the taste and kept going even more focused. “That’s when I met Ellen. She’s a vampire, and unlike anyone I had ever met so far. She wasn’t out for blood, she was just… surviving. Keeping routines, following dreams, setting goals, you know, living her life. I found myself wishing to live life with her. Until, of course, it turned out we were terrible at it.”

“ _Were?_ ” Dinah interrupted her with a scoff, “Montoya, you two are still going at it. Still, terribly, if I may say so.”

Renee didn’t even acknowledge her comment besides flipping her off, which made Helena smile easily, as Renee continued with her story. “We would fight a lot, and the fights started to escalate dangerously. I would threaten her with the weapons I carried, and when she’d bite me she wasn’t gentle…” 

Renee paused and made a move to drink again, but as slowly as she raised the glass, she lowered it back down untouched this time. That didn’t stop Helena from finishing her second drink in one swift movement though, she was completely taken by the story.

The deep, thoughtful expression that had taken over Renee’s face went away almost immediately as she continued. “During one particularly nasty argument, I dared her to turn me… and she did, “ Renee smiled in a mixture of emotions that none of the listeners could completely understand, “At first she took care of me, but then the relationship got even worse. There’s nothing like an existential crisis to mess up your love life, let me tell you. Now, I didn’t run away to Europe to do God knows what. You know what I did, kid? I got drunk,” as if to demonstrate her point, Renee raised her glass and then finished its contents before continuing. “Blood, alcohol, all of it, and all of it together. I think a couple of decades must have passed until I saw some vague resemblance of light, or sobriety, or a purpose.”

“And then I came in!”

Harley’s loud voice startled them all. She was now sporting really soft-looking pajamas with little hyenas on them. Did everyone here just lived for self-references and irony. Helena wondered. 

“Were you taking a trip down memory lane without me? Rude!” Harley said as she jumped into the couch beside Renee, they looked like absolute, complete opposites.

“I was telling Helena how it makes total sense for a hunter to question themselves when they become just the creature they’re supposed to hunt,” Renee explained, matter of factly.

“Did you tell her about how we met? How I saved your ass?” Harley smirked.

On the other side of the couch, Renee sighed, “Right. I… One day, while I was pretty drunk, mind you, I ran into our friend Harley over here. I tried to fight her.” Renee smiled proudly at that.

“And I thought she was _so cute_ for that,” Harley mocked, and made a move to pinch Renee’s cheek, but her hand was quickly swatted away. After laughing, in her signature style that didn’t suggest a very sane mind, Harley finished the story herself. “Listen, I have a heart, okay? Besides, it wouldn’t have been fun to just eat her right up when she could barely stand still. I like a challenge,” it was Harley’s turn to smile proudly. “I just locked her up somewhere until she sobered up. But let me tell ya, this one’s stubborn as hell.”

“Anyway!” Renee interrupted her, “long story short, it was a wake-up call. I realized I just had to accept who I was and what I was capable and incapable of. I couldn’t drink it all away, as you can’t fight it all away. I figured I could get more done from this side of the story, I could actually get shit done. We don’t have to feel like monsters, if we don’t act as such. You get what I’m saying?”

Helena hesitated, she had a feeling she’d understood so far, Renee’s story, Harley caring more about being entertained than just randomly killing, but what then? It didn’t really click on her mind until Dinah spoke up.

“The bars, the drinks, giving and taking jobs, being part of society in a barely decent manner… Your kind does that now, and it’s all regulated nowadays. In big part thanks to people like Renee,” Dinah explained in a soft voice.

“Yeah,” the woman in question agreed bitterly, “not that they let my name show up anywhere. It’s always the Captain of the police taking all the credit. Fuck those guys.”

“Yeah sure,” Dinah scoffed, “I bet your ass you’ll join the force again before I’m dead.”

While Renee waved her off and their banter continued some more, Helena glanced at the empty glass in her hand. Things were starting to take shape in her mind, which could be great or really, really bad news. So, “Can I have another one?” she lifted up the cup.

As Renee started to shake her head no, Harley practically leaped from the couch. “Of course!” she exclaimed, “you’re my guest, Bertinelli. I’ll get you the very best I have.” She walked away with a wink and Helena found herself smiling, something that was quite unusual for her.

“You’re gonna get drunk,” Renee noted, but by the way she leaned back on the couch without another word, it was clear she’d decided to let it happen, just as Helena, who eagerly took the glass that Harley placed in her in front of her moments later.

“What about you?” Helena thought to ask after the first sip. Her question was aimed at Harley. She wanted access to the infamous story.

However, Harley waved her hand, “Oh it’s been so long. I don’t even remember how I got here.”

Dinah laughed at that though, “Chill, Carmila. It’s not so deep.”

“ _Her?_ Oh, I met her. She’s not that big of a deal,” Harley scoffed, “Meanwhile, I am older than sliced bread.”

“That’s not a lot.”

“I’m older than Gotham, America, _and_ Jesus,” Harley added, counting on her fingers for emphasis. “Basically there should be a religion for me.”

Before Renee or Dinah could jump into playful banter with Harley, their lighthearted energy came to a screeching halt when they heard Helena speak.

“My parents used to love that… that guy, Jesus… religion, I mean. They… they were very… yeah, that.”

Her voice trailed off. She was clearly already somewhat drunk, having had way more blood than she was used to in a very short span of time. One of those glasses could be equal to feeding once, but she was used to feeding as least as possible and now she’d just had three glass. She was slurring just a little bit but she was as relaxed as any of them has seen her so far. The tension had left her shoulders, her head had fallen to the back of the couch, and a faint smile was tugging at her lips in a way that just had to be unconscious. Dinah particularly couldn’t help but take note of even more details. When Helena spoke, there was a glimpse of her fangs, and there was a sparkling darkness in her eyes that simply had Dinah looking away for fear of drowning in them.

“Helena, I don’t think you’ve told us the entire story of how you survived, and then made it back here,” Renee spoke in an unusually soft tone, trying not to scare Helena but just as the others she was dying to know, “would you mind?”

Helena, of course, did mind. She was silent long enough for the others to believe she wouldn’t say anything at all. But the thing is, her brain, her entire body was feeling an inexplicable high. It had been so many years since she’d allowed herself to drink so much blood at once, she’d almost forgotten the effect. At first, she felt stronger than ever, her senses sharpened to perfection, but as she continued to drink, a soft haze blanketed everything she felt, and everything she thought. She could understand why Renee went for this coping mechanism back in the day. It was fantastic. And it left little room to overthink what she was about to say. So the words started to flow, slowly and with the tiniest slur, but the more she shared the more she felt compelled to continue.

“It was a Sunday, after church. That’s why we were all there. We let down our guard… They bribed our security, killed whoever stood on their path, They used guns, at first, I think they had a facade that got them that far. Pretending to be human, ordinary robbers or something. But there were so many of them… We were outnumbered, taken by surprise, and with the kids and elders there my parents couldn’t risk trying something drastic… Maybe they should have.” Helena made the first pause to drink from her glass, it was only a sip. “They put us all in one room. It was, at first, very quick… The shots got all of us. They got me too. But as soon as the blood started to flow… they lost… themselves.” Helena’s voice was soft, she was lucky she was in a sort of daze, otherwise, she wouldn’t have ever been able to talk so calmly of her experience, which was only about to get worse.

“It was absolute chaos, disgusting, obscene. Bodies being thrown around, blood splattering the walls. And the sounds… _Fuck_. It was easy for a small body to go missing though. For such a big mission, they had hired many people to get the job done. And once it was technically done, all bets were off. That’s how, an old guy that loved the concept of the damsel in distress and who’s father always wanted to raise a daughter, managed to take me away without anybody noticing on time. I was badly hurt though, I should have died right there and then, but he wanted me alive so… He bit me. Turning hurt so much… I think, I think that even now if I focus enough I can still feel that pain. Being on the verge of death, agonizing for hours, and then when you think you’re finally gone… no, still here.”

Helena made a pause to look at the faces around her. It was the first time Harley’s face looked serious. Harley had been around for a long time, and she’d seen similar things, even worse events take place, even had taken part in some. But one thing that put her apart from the worst of her kind, was that she had managed to not completely forget how to feel empathy for others, so that’s what she focused on. Renee was simply staring at a corner of the room, not being able to meet her eyes. She remembered hearing the news, she remembered the chaos that followed after the break in the status quo of Gotham’s hunters and vampires relationship. And she very well remembered the pain of turning. She knew they wouldn’t forget it any time soon. Unlike Dinah. Dinah was staring straight at Helena, and right into her eyes when she had the chance. Dinah’s eyes, a beautiful, rich brown color looked sad, so sad, and Helena couldn’t understand why. Her senses were starting to clear, but for some reason, she couldn’t stop talking.

“In any way, he took me to Sicily. I was raised there. Pretty much in isolation. Trying to make sense of who I was now, who I should become, and how to… live. They were kind enough. I grew to think of them as family, really. They were sympathetic and taught me everything they could. On the weekends we visited small, rural towns… I was just a kid though… I didn’t understand why, I didn’t want to but, I needed to stay alive. I don’t know how long it took for me to accept what happened, what I was, but eventually, I started training. I devoted a hundred years to training my body, acquiring all lethal skills I could, learning, studying, until I was ready. They gave me a list of every name they could remember, and once I was here, some extensive research has told me all I need to know, every damned name of every vampire that was present in my house that day. I will kill them all, one by one, until I’m done.” She nodded with finality.

The group stayed silent for a long while. None of them had any idea what to say, but it didn’t seem completely necessary. They finished their drinks in silence and not too long later they heard a long banging on the door downstairs.

“Crap. I should go open up,” Harley stated, begrudgingly raising from the couch but all ready for business, seemingly uncaring that she was wearing pajamas. Before she left, she stood by Helena and smiled, “You can stay here as long as you like, okay? I kinda like you, killer.” 

With a wink and a spring in her step, Harley was off, and Renee was on her way too.

“Listen, kid. With your parents, they always made us feel like we were more than employees, you know? I’m your friend, Helena, I’ve always been. You can count on me. And when you’re not fucking wasted, I still hope we can work together.”

As Renee started walking away, Dinah turned and asked her, “Where are you going?”

“Not that it's any of your business but I have a meeting with a source,” she grumbled, “Think you can take care of little Carmilla over here?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, though. A second later it was just Helena and Dinah on that couch. Helena, who was once again staring sadly at the empty glass in her hand, and Dinah that now that she understood the history behind the little scars in Helena’s body she didn’t want to stare again. They were silent for a while, until Helena broke the silence.

“Do you think you can get me more?” she asked, extending the glass over to Dinah.

The other woman laughed, “More?” she studied Helena like that, relaxed, her eyes now sleepy and a small pout taking place on her lips. Her head was tilted and she was practically begging. She looked adorable. Which wasn’t at all a word Dinah wanted to associate with a vampire, not even Helena Bertinelli in all her unique glory. “Yeah, I don’t think so. You look done for today.”

In response, Helena sighed. A little overdramatically, in Dinah’s opinion. Then she sat up on the couch, planting her feet firmly on the ground and resting her forearms on her knees. Her hair went down, slightly shielding her face and Dinah grieved the loss of the nice view.

“Maybe I should go,” Helena whispered, but made no move to stand up.

“You don’t have to,” Dinah stated kindly, “Do you think you could even stand up in this state?”

“No,” Helena snorted, it turned into an actual laugh that stole a smile from Dinah, but then Helena cleared her throat and back in her serious tone she added, “maybe not yet. But then maybe… you could get me another drink?”

Dinah laughed loudly, the sound sent chills down Helena’s spine. It wasn’t exactly an unpleasant feeling. Dinah stood up and moved to the kitchen while she spoke, “You’re unbelievable. I thought you hated this shit.” When she glanced back at the couch, she saw Helena shrug. Dinah returned to the couch with two glasses, one for Helena, not very strong and with just a small amount of blood, one for herself, not so strong either, and no blood for her.

“Can I ask you something?” Helena asked, then taking a sip of her drink, and before Dinah gave a chance she blurted out, “Why is this so bland?!”

“Seriously?!”

“No, no,” Helena shook her head, “I mean, yeah, it’s not great- But like, I get it, I’m drunk, kind of, supposedly.” She took a bigger sip of the drink and after taking a moment to organize her thoughts, much to Dinah’s amusement, she added, “What I meant to ask, is why are you being nice to me? I thought you’d hate me. But you are friends with Renee and Harley. I don’t get why, or how you do it.”

Dinah was halfway through planning how to tell Helena she wasn’t the kind to reveal her life story so easily, but it was true that Helena had done just that. So, Dinah took a deep breath and went for it. In the easiest way she could manage, avoiding too many details and hoping to steal some of the drunk ease that the other woman was carrying, she started.

“I told you, vampires killed my mother a few years ago. It was very cruel, it was… _unfair_. They were drunk, bloodthirsty, and this stuff happens I guess,” Dinah’s voice was soft, and it made Helena lean in a little to hear. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget… I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to separate the two things, vamps, and my mom’s murder. But truth is, what did humans do, huh? The police showed up too late. That’s when I heard about some Montoya vamp that had been suspended for years and now worked as a private investigator. Oh, _she_ knows how to get the job done. In a matter of days, I saw the names of those men in the news again. One was inexplicably murdered by a wild hyena. The other, surprisingly, went to jail. Isn’t it funny? What’s a couple of years to him? And my mom’s life? Nothing. But it meant the world to me.”

Sitting on that couch, Dinah and Helena were feeling very differently at the moment. Dinah found herself to feel surprisingly calm, given what she had just shared. She wasn’t used to talking about it. In fact, she tried her hardest to avoid talking about it. But well, Helena was a good listener, and sitting there quite drunk she gave the impression of being pretty harmless. Plus, the fact that they both seemed to be into getting revenge, that had a way of bringing people together. On the other hand, though, Helena was troubled. The excess of blood with some added alcohol in her system was starting to make her sleepy when she wanted to be anything but. She had started to bounce her leg, and her fingers to tap on her knee. She was starting to remember that she was alone with Dinah, and Dinah made her nervous, and realizing that Dinah was there, close enough to touch, letting herself be vulnerable. Were Helena’s fingers aching to reach out and touch, give comfort?

“Is it difficult? Being surrounded by vampires… that reminder?” Helena asked instead, hoping her voice didn’t give away how much she cared for the answer. _Do you understand how much it hurts me? Being a vampire, actually being that reminder, feeling like I’m the exact same thing that killed my entire family, almost as a disease?_ She almost wanted to ask.

Dinah shrugged. She was thoughtful for a moment and then said, “It was inevitable. I told you, Gotham reeks with vamps in every corner. And there’s an advantage or two.” Dinah sent a playful smile in Helena’s way, and continued. “At the Black Mask Club, I work for Roman Sionis. Sure, the guy is creepy and just… odd. But his strange affection for me gives me a bit of immunity. Which of course is complemented by the huge immunity that working with Harley gives me.” She easily read the confusion and interest in Helena’s eyes so she took it upon herself to explain the situation.

“See, from what I’ve heard, Harley used to be so… nearly enslaved by this guy she was in love with. I mean centuries of doing every awful thing he wanted, and only enjoying about half of it. They broke up some time ago though, Renee could probably explain it better. Since I’ve been alive Harley’s had this place. She really is one of the most powerful creatures around here. Most people are scared shitless of her, As they should be” Dinah chuckled and then went on, “You know, that whole hyena thing and everything you have but heightened by a thousand? She earned it though, that’s what I respect of her. At this point, she’s above all the bullshit that most vamps are after. Being so old, she says she no longer cares that much about money, power, hurting people for the sake of it. Sure, she’s absolutely nuts, unnecessarily violent, and does drink and sell blood for a living but… She just wants to have fun, you know? Being on her side, you see something kind and harmless about her. I have fun working here. I feel a little safe, I’ll admit.”

It was nice, hearing about it. Dinah and Helena exchanged a smile and their eyes met for a moment and it felt much better than _nice_ , but Helena’s stubborn, insecure and self-sabotaging brain couldn’t give up without a fight. There was something bugging at her. She didn’t have the sharpness of mind to let it go.

“I keep thinking of something you said a minute ago,” Helena mumbled, looking away, “About separating the two things… I don’t know… I don’t think I’ll be able to separate my family’s massacre from my own existence.” Helena let the sentence hang in the air for a moment, but as if it hadn’t been enough, a dam had broke and she continued talking. “Every time I feed, a part of me tells me that’s what their blood must have tasted like that day and I should be _ashamed_. Every time I remember what I am, I feel like I’m the thing that killed them all. When I miss them, when I wish they were here, I know if they were they would kill me. I have nightmares of being there that day, but on the other side, and I…”

She couldn’t go on. There weren’t any tears, but the knot on her throat made it difficult to speak or even breathe. Beside her, Dinah had gone rigid. That admission she hadn’t been waiting for. It didn’t take a genius to realize Helena wasn’t thrilled about her situation, and she carried massive emotional burdens on her shoulders. But hearing it like that, it was something else. How could one live feeling so negatively about one’s entire existence? Dinah was surprised by how intensely she wished to ease Helena’s pain a little bit, to make her feel like it was possible to separate both things, feel like it was okay to be alive, even more, it was _good_ that she was alive, maybe she wanted to make Helena want to feel alive, at least a little bit. She knew words wouldn’t work though.

“Helena, didn’t anyone say or… Can I give you a hug?”

The question left Helena dumbstruck. It must have shown on her face, because Dinah laughed. But once Dinah cautiously and tenderly placed a hand on Helena’s back, the defenses crumbled. Helena leaned in slowly, her head softly fell on Dinah’s shoulder, and soon she felt Dinah’s head rest against her own. Their arms wrapped around each other, Dinah’s arms were certain and gentle, Helena was nervous and hesitant, but she relished that embrace unlike anything else. Dinah didn’t have to finish her original question, and Helena wouldn’t answer, but if she had to she would’ve said that no, back then no one gave her a damned hug until it was too late and she was permanently stiff in anyone’s arms, and yes, she’d been hugged, but no, it had never felt like that.

Soothed as she was, Helena thought that maybe hours or days could’ve passed in that embrace. But since Dinah had a different perception of time, it was probably just seconds, minutes at most. Still, that hug would turn Helena’s life upside down.

But first, “I’m falling asleep,” she whispered against Dinah’s shoulder.

“Yeah, I expected that.”

The loss of the contact when Dinah pulled away was nearly heartbreaking, but the smile glowing on her face helped ease a little bit of Helena’s grief.

“You can lay down here, Harley won’t mind,” Dinah spoke softly, as with both hands on Helena’s shoulders she guided her to lay on the couch.

Getting comfortable there came naturally, just as closing her eyes. Helena wanted to be stronger, to not fall asleep. But how couldn’t she, when a second later there were fingers combing through her hair? It was the single gentlest gesture she had experiences in years. It would’ve been enough to make her cry, if she hadn’t fallen asleep first.

Dinah was standing up, looking down at Helena, feeling like maybe she shouldn’t have allowed herself to do that. But the way Helena’s short hair was messy, and looking so goddamned soft, and how Helena probably wouldn’t remember it, and… fuck, she thought, she’d definitely remember it though. And she had loved the way Helena’s hair felt on her fingers, and the way Helena’s head fit on her shoulder, and the way Helena’s eyes met hers, like maybe she would like to experience all that again sometime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long to update but i like posting long chapters lol  
> i'm already working on the next chapter, it includes more Helena/Dinah flirting, vampire activities and hopefully more hyena and/or roller derby content  
> Please let me know what you think! Comments are the reason i live (jk but seriously tell me if you like it or hate it or what you want to see!)  
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> As always i'm on tumblr @afterlaughy


	5. We Bleed Holy Water

Helena woke up the next morning and took her time before doing anything about it. She stayed impossibly still, with eyes closed and her breathing even. First, she took note of everything she felt in her body. There was a minimal itch on her side near her ribs, where she was stabbed last night and where a wound should be all healed by now. She felt a fun electric buzz going on all over her body, the remnants of all the blood she’d drank the previous night. She imagined it was close to what people would call a mild hangover, except she didn’t get wasted drinking alcohol, and instead just drank about three times the amount of blood she was used to in a really short span of time. The result wasn’t a troubled stomach and a headache, but a feeling of being renewed and energized, with all her senses more sharpened than ever before, but dull by some fatigue and a vague sensation that she couldn’t control them very well if she wanted to.

Next thing Helena tried to focus on were her surroundings. She was still laying on Harley’s couch, in the small living room. She knew there were two doors on one side that take to the bathroom and a bedroom, and on the other side was the kitchen, where Helena concentrated. She heard three voices arguing over there. One voice was loud and playful. One was grumpy and familiar. The other was… Dinah, just Dinah. And Dinah represented many new things for Helena. That voice she liked way more than she was willing to admit. However, there was also a growing distraction bothering Helena’s senses. She couldn’t ignore the distinct feeling of having a very small person standing near her and chewing loudly. 

“Just so you know, I can tell you’re awake,” a new voice said right beside Helena, “you’re literally frowning right now.”

Helena’s frown deepened. She tensed and considered jumping into action, but thought it might be rude to murder a stranger on Harley’s living room after the woman helped her the previous night. Besides, Helena opened her eyes and, “A child?!” she exclaimed. She closed her eyes again immediately and covered her face with her arm because why the fuck did Harley let a child _and_ so much fucking sunlight enter her apartment?!

“Harley! Your hostage woke up!” the young girl quite literally yelled, and left Helena’s side to go jump on the other couch, as she continued to eat the cereal she was carrying.

“She’s not a hostage, kid!” Harley corrected, walking back to the living room with Renee and Dinah on tow, “She’s a friend, okay? New to town, tragic past, revenge plot, kinda likable, I might adopt her.”

“What the fuck?” Helena’s confused whispered was disregarded as everyone took a seat around.

Harley fell into the other couch with as much grace as the kid, eating some sort of sandwich with one hand and holding a bowl of cereal on the other, apparently one to indulge herself on all cravings. Dinah sat down on the same couch on the other side of the girl. She actually acted like a normal adult human, drinking a cup of coffee and playfully pulling down the kid’s cap on her head, revealing a sense of familiarity that Helena found equal parts endearing and troubling for the way it tugged on a deep, lonesome corner of her heart. Finally, Renee sat down on the other end of the couch where Helena had spent the night, offering her a sandwich just like Harley’s and a cup of coffee that, grateful and surprised, Helena found out was still spiked with blood, as she guessed was everything Harley served in her home.

“Thanks,” Helena mumbled, accepting her breakfast meanwhile a previous discussion went on around her.

“I’m not saying it’s okay she skips school-” Harley argued as Dinah continuously interrupted her.

“You literally said that a minute ago.”

“I’m saying she’s smart enough to know when to go.”

“Yeah!” the girl chuckled and turned towards Dinah, “you think I learn something useful in school? Those teachers are all fucking losers.”

“Language,” Renee grumbled out.

Helena turned toward her, breathed in deeply, and then frowned, whatever Renee was drinking smelt disgusting to her, mixing black coffee with alcohol and enough blood to get her through the day.

Harley continued, pointing a pale finger at Dinah, “You have to admit, Canary, the kid can take care of herself. She’s got pretty much her whole life figured out.”

“She’s more than a hunter, you know?”

Dinah’s words filled Helena’s ears and made her mind come to a screeching halt, she coughed on the last sip of her coffee and looked around frantically. Those words felt strange, felt familiar, felt so wrong. She hadn’t been listening too intently at the conversation, but she knew they weren’t talking about her. She looked at the young girl sitting between Dinah and Harley, and she couldn’t look away even when Renee laughed.

“Right, we forgot introductions,” Renee said, “Helena, this is Cassandra Cain. She’s no Bertinelli but she’s the youngest in one of the best families of vampire hunters that Gotham has to offer nowadays.”

“She’s the tiniest badass I’ve ever met,” Harley added proudly, “a little bit of a snitch, and sort of my apprentice.”

“She’s also just a kid that you two keep dragging into your shady business,” Dinah added, looking pointedly at Renee and Harley. Helena thought she was serious, but the other women rolled their eyes, so Helena wasn’t that sure anymore.

“Lastly, she’s the one that gave us a hint of your whereabouts yesterday so we could save your ass.”

“I was doing fine!” Helena growled at Renee’s comment and turned towards the kid, Cassandra, and tried to soften her voice, “Nice to meet you.”

“You can call me Cass,” she shrugged, calmly finished her cereal, and went on, “you know, my whole family has its eye on you. They kinda want your head. But they also haven’t finished figuring out what’s your deal, so they’re just watching for now. The Crossbow Killer is _the_ most interesting thing that’s happened lately though.” As she talked, she pulled out a cellphone and got lost in it, pretty much zoning out.

Helena bit her lip to prevent a proud grin from showing, and instead focused on something else that piked her attention from what Cass let on.

“Just watching? So they aren’t the ones dropping death threats at my house?”

“What?! You’ve gotten _death threats_?”

Dinah’s exclamation surprised Helena, but she didn’t know what else to do besides shrug.

Meanwhile, Harley jumped in place and moved to the edge of her seat, “Death threats! So dramatic, I love it! Who do we think it is?”

“Well, Helena has angered quite a few people in the short time she’s been back in Gotham,” Renee said as if it were nothing, “Could be pretty much anyone, I think. I’m sure we can figure it out, though.”

“Of course!” Harley exclaimed, waving her hand, “piece of cake.”

There was a beat of silence, as everyone finished their drinks and breakfast. Helena started to feel uncomfortable and out of place, she knew it was time she went back home, probably to a new and creative little threat. She stood up slowly, even more awkward with all eyes on her, and cleared her throat.

“I should leave,” she said, hesitated a moment, and finally got out what she’d been planning to say. “Thanks… for last night, I- I guess. I owe you one… all of you.”

She’d really expected to receive a you’re welcome, maybe a pat in the back, a goodbye and be done with it. Instead, Renee clapped her hands and looked up at her with a smirk.

“Great! Are you free tomorrow?”

“What?”

Renee stood up as well, picking up her jacket and getting ready to leave, “I’m working on a case, and having a skillfully trained assassin might help. I’ll call you.”

Helena hadn’t completely made sense of what happened when Harley jumped to her side and gripped her arm, “Oh! And I know how you can pay me. You look like you’ll be killer on my team on the roller derby!”

“What?!”

Helena, still dumbfounded on how things turned around so quickly when surrounded by this group of women, looked at Dinah next. They all looked at her in fact, waiting. For a split second, Helena remembered her the previous night. Dinah had been there, only human yet she’d showed up there and with an energy and fierceness that went beyond anything Helena was familiar with. When the wounded target had tried to run away, he’d met a high kick from Dinah, Dinah in those unfairly tight gold pants that made Helena shudder at the thought.

“I’ll think of something,” Dinah replied finally, her voice slow and smooth. It made Helena feel like something inside her chest had melted, and at once she felt a little lighter and also like her legs couldn’t stand her full weight for long.

The moment was broken by Harley once again. She skipped to the back of the other couch and playfully snatched Cass cap from her head to put it on, “Come on, little shit, I’m taking you to school.”

“What?!” this time it was Cass’ turn to exclaim.

The rest was a whirlwind. Everyone picked up their things and started leaving the apartment in a rush. Helena wasn’t so quick, her mind still trying to make sense of what she’d gotten herself into. Before she knew it, once again it was only her and Dinah alone in there.

“Hey,” Dinah said softly, walking closer to her, “are those, um, threats, very bad?”

Helena shook her head. She’d noticed Dinah looked unsettled ever since the threats were mentioned. “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” Helena added, standing taller and holding her chin up, hoping to reassure Dinah, and hoping to distract herself from the nagging thought that it looked like Dinah was worried about her, which meant Dinah cared about her to some extent.

“Right,” Dinah chuckled at Helena’s overly proud stance, and she kept looking, enjoying what she saw and not afraid to take her time looking, then something seemed to click behind her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but hesitated.

Helena, impatient, said, “I do owe you. Anything you want.”

Internally, she scolded herself for a moment there. Did she sound too eager? Truth was she didn’t want to go on a mission with Renee or endanger her life with Harley’s games, but with Dinah it was different. She wanted to do something for her, she wanted Dinah to want something from her.

A smile slowly crept onto Dinah’s face, “Fine. You can get me a drink.”

Dinah spin on her heels and walked toward the door as Helena stared after her and helplessly repeated, “A drink?”

“You owe me a date, Huntress,” Dinah finished with a wink.

* * *

Against her better judgment, Helena found herself back at Harley’s place the next day. At that point, it was a fact she was frequenting Harley’s place more often than any other place in Gotham besides her house. It wasn’t all bad though. Apparently, Harley could afford herself a life of splurging on many things, including employing Dinah and paying very well, and free drinks for her friends. This meant that Renee spent a lot of time sitting at the bar, even if she looked completely out of place with her serious, dark-colored clothes, in that sparkly bar. She’d called Helena and asked her to meet her there so they could arrange their plans for the night.

Helena showed up relatively early. The sun had just started to go down, it's last rays were a bright annoyance to Helena's hypersensitive skin and eyesight. She showed up to the eclectic establishment wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket, and a bad mood. A bad mood that was increasingly difficult to keep when Harley passed her a drink, Dinah smiled in greeting, and Renee kept calling her “kid” as if they were still in the early nineteenth century and Helena wasn’t a bloodthirsty monster, in her own words.

“What do you mean you’re not coming?!” Helena grumbled halfway through Renee’s explanation of the plan.

Renee sighed, “Listen, kid, I can only afford to go to the Black Mask Club once a month, at most. If I were to go every week that would raise suspicion. That’s why I need you. You’re basically a ghost.”

That earned a snort from Harley, who was sitting atop the bar. “Ghosts aren’t real, Montoya. That’s _fiction_.” Her devilish smile didn’t hide an ounce of her amusement. “You should go, Crossbow Killer. Cass and I are working on your case. Whoever’s been sending you those love letters will regret it.”

Since Helena was still frowning, Dinah intervened. “Don’t you want to listen to me sing at the club tonight, Helena?” she said, her voice was playful and she showed a smirk that had Helena instantly blushing. “It’ll be alright. Stick with me, okay?” Dinah added, “When I give you a signal, you go to the bathroom. On the other side of the wall, there’s my dressing room. Roman goes say hi to me every night, you’ll recognize him, his an annoyance.”

“Exactly,” Renee took over, “focus on Roman, then. Follow him if you can. Pay attention to anything suspicious, find out his reaction.”

“Reaction to what exactly, Renee?” Dinah asked.

Renee smiled and the group was impressed to see that smile, for it was wide and mischievous and not at all usual for Renee. Must be the thrill of working on a case. “I have a surprise for him. You’ll know. Remember the driver we caught when Helena was out to catch that man?”

“The poor boy you tortured in exchange for information? Yeah, we remember.”

Disregarding Dinah’s teasing, Renee continued, “He told me everything. He delivers orders from the blood bank across town, including to the Black Mask Club. But, he confessed that they’ve been paying the drivers to double the orders without paying for the full thing. Illegal, sure, but no judge would bat an eye for it. Sionis can easily get away with that if caught.” Renee made a pause and looked around, her friends were paying attention, exactly what she wanted. “However, I noticed a little something. The amount of blood the Black Mask Club orders, even doubled, it’s even less than what Harley orders for this much smaller place. Now, do you think the most popular club in Gotham could get through the weekend with the amount of blood that I could drink by myself?”

An exaggeration, hopefully, thought Helena. But the point was loud and clear.

Following one overly dramatic gasp from Harley, Dinah said out loud what they all had figured out. “He’s getting the blood elsewhere.”

The information hung heavy in the air for another moment until Renee addressed Helena again. “Helena, I just need a lead. Just get me a hint to how he’s getting the blood. Anything I could use to find out more. I know I can get him. We can get him. Come on, wouldn’t you like to catch the worst vampire this city has at the moment?”

Renee noticed the spark in Helena’s eyes even before she got the affirmative answer she knew she’d get. But still, Harley decided one last push wouldn’t hurt. “Besides…” she started saying in a tone that already warned everyone she was up to something, “if you go, you can keep an eye on our sweet, little Canary over here. Keep her safe, you know?”

Helena’s shocked expression came at the same time as Dinah’s angry scoff, “I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

“I can go.”

Helena’s blurted out words stopped Dinah in her tracks. “Good, that’s… good,” she stuttered, much to Renee and Harley’s amusement. “I mean, I don’t need protection but, still, you can go with me.”

“I _am_ going,” Helena started to smile, it was small, but the sight was new and startling for Dinah.

“Good. Unnecessary for my safety, but okay.”

“Okay.”

When they were done, Helena and Dinah were still staring at each other. As focused as Dinah was on Helena’s sweet brown eyes and the sudden lightness coming from them, she didn’t miss the smile on her face. This was a new side of Helena, not drunk, smiling softly, at ease. She looked like a totally different person than the badass, killer vampire that jumps out of her motorcycle to avenge her family with precise movements and unbelievable strength and power. Problem was, both versions made Dinah’s heart skip a beat and she wasn’t sure what to do with that, or if she wanted to do something about that.

Renee cleared her throat, “If you two are done… it’s time to go.” She sat down on a stool on the bar beside Harley. They both had smug smiles on their faces, and Dinah simply rolled her eyes and walked away, out of the place. Helena, on the other hand, hesitated nervously. She looked at the door, back at the bar, at the ground, and clueless as to what to say, she followed Dinah’s lead out the door, not missing the women’s chuckle behind them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> I already have almost the entire next chapter ready, I considered posting it as just one chapter but this way I can probably update in just a couple of days instead of taking so long!
> 
> I have a Question! Would anybody be interested in reading a Birds of Prey x 10 Cloverfield Lane AU?? Basically the ladies find themselves in an underground apocalypse bunker, but there are no creepy men, they're just having fun and Helena and Dinah fall in love, with maybe just a tiny bit of angst to keep things interesting but not much tbh. let me know if you would read that!
> 
> Again, thank you for reading and please leave a comment! let me know what you think, if you like it, what you wanna see anything at all!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @afterlaughy and talk to me whenever


	6. Strange you're not a threat to me

Once outside of Harley’s place, Helena realized that although she knew and understood the basics of Renee’s plans, she was badly prepared for all the little things that came with it. For example, Dinah being interested in her bike and convincing her to go together on it, Dinah’s arms around her as they travel around the city, Dinah’s scent, Dinah’s touch, Dinah’s breathing, Dinah’s body pressed against her, Dinah smiling up at her when she took off her helmet when they arrived. Helena was already struggling to keep her breathing in check, but then Dinah leaned forward and whispered, “Follow my lead, focus on me, and _relax_ , it’ll be okay.”

In her mind, Helena repeated those words as a mantra. She followed Dinah’s lead, stopping by the bar to get a drink, greeting bartenders, bouncers and other coworkers, and then walking to the dressing room. Leaning against her door, Dinah gave her instructions to find the bathroom and the time when her set started. Helena would watch her sing and afterward they could leave together, as if nothing happened. But first, now alone, Helena made her way to the bathroom and waited.

In theory, her job wasn’t all that easy. The club was opening, steadily filling in with lots of people. Loud, distracting, overwhelming. It clicked for Helena that a club was the perfect business for Roman Sionis if he was doing something shady on the side, for it had to be nearly impossible even for vampire to eavesdrop conversations on such a crowded place overflowing with sounds and scents. However, although she wouldn’t ever use that word, Helena was nearly obsessed with Dinah. So she found it surprisingly easy to do as she was told and focus on Dinah, find her voice and her scent above that of everyone else. Locked in a bathroom stall Helena stood still and closed her eyes, and followed Dinah’s presence as a thread guiding her somewhere good, somewhere pleasant, somewhere she was meant to be.

For a while it was just Dinah, going about her routine, humming to herself. It was a special moment, even though Helena didn’t have time to dwell on it. Eventually, a visitor arrived.

“My little bird!” a strange voice exclaimed, and from the other side of the wall Helena shuddered. “Good evening, gorgeous. Are you ready for tonight? It’s going to be a good one, I can feel it.”

Helena, aware of Dinah’s mindless hums and agreements, tried to focus now on this strange voice so she could follow later, but she didn’t like it one bit. This man spoke deliberately, languidly in a way that was obviously rehearsed, a cheap act hiding something that Helena’s most definitely didn’t want to get to know. 

After some more meaningless monologue from Roman Sionis, he finally bid his goodbye. “I’ve gotta leave now, little bird. I have some big boys business to deal with, I wouldn’t want to bore your pretty little head with that. Focus on your show, my star.”

Helena had to restrain herself from groaning out loud. She’d heard descriptions from Dinah, Harley and Renee, and she hadn’t even seen him yet, but she was already sure she disliked Roman Sionis. Still, she had to make an effort to focus on his voice and follow that lead.

After he was out of Dinah’s dressing room, Roman clearly said, “Mr. Zsasz, please go deal with tonight’s delivery. I’ll wait for you upstairs.”

Upstairs? That would make him even more difficult to track, Helena thought. She walked out of the bathroom and proceeded to wander around the hallways of the back of the club, trying to stay as close as possible to Roman. Luckily for her, that man loved the sound of his own voice, so as he walked every other step he was greeting someone or giving orders, so Helena followed his track. Until, of course, he started up some set of stairs. When she found the stairs, before she could debate if it was safe to follow, she came face to face with a bouncer. He was guarding the stairs, and Helena…

“You’re not supposed to be back here,” the man barked at her.

Helena only looked at him for a split second. She recognized him. Vampire. Older than her. Disgusting. A familiar face. A name on her list.

“I’m just leaving,” she mumbled, turning around and walking away as fast as she could without raising suspicions, though she felt him chase after her. Fuck, she cursed in her mind, she really didn’t plan to cause a scene, but it wasn’t her fault that Roman had somehow employed the exact same men she was planning to kill. 

Helena figured she’d find the back door and exit, and if this man insisted on chasing her, she’d kill him and message Dinah the plan was off. However, she couldn’t deny that the thought of letting down Dinah, disappointing her, missing her set, simply leaving her alone when she wasn’t supposed to, well, she didn’t want to do that.

Finally, when Helena was scared the back of the club was nothing but a dark maze without an exit, she found it. The man was still chasing after her, but she walked confidently toward the door. To her surprise, though, the door opened before she could get to it. Victor Zsasz walked in. He had bad posture, a deep frown, and enough scars on his face to disturb anybody who glanced at him. He was confused to see Helena, but decided against reacting, and let her slip past him and out the door. He was in a hurry to get back to Roman and whatever was going on in the club wasn’t his business. The guards could take of that, _he_ was above that, Roman was waiting for _him_.

Once outside, Helena gulped, she’d felt chills as she passed by Victor Zsasz. He had turned his head slightly, regarded her, taken notice of her smell. He couldn’t possibly recognize her, could he? He couldn’t know that complete stranger had his name written on top of a list. He couldn’t possibly imagine that this young vampire once was a little girl from a family of hunters he was ordered to kill.

Helena sighed. Gotham was turning to be a bit more messed up than she remembered, and all these coincidences and mix-ups could certainly stand in the way of her plans. But she was determined to go ahead with her plan, no matter how difficult it turned. However, she’d decided she was also determined to follow through with her promise to Renee. One night of following someone else’s plan, that was it, one night. It was nothing.

With that in mind, Helena stood still waiting for the man that had been chasing her to come out. He didn’t. Victor Zsasz must have told him something. Something could be going on inside, and Helena wasn't sure how to proceed. At least she wasn’t, until she heard a scream.

“ _What?!_ ”

It was Roman Sionis.

Helena looked up and found open windows on the floor above the club. Roman was there, and he was angry. Quickly, stealthy, Helena flung herself above trash containers and small ledges on the wall and then she focused on listening, finding Roman’s voice and focusing.

“What do you mean he isn’t here?!” “And my money? My blood? But they’re _mine_!” “Find him! Kill him!” “Well, then kill his boss, kill everyone who works there!”

Even from there, the effect of all the people from the club was disorienting. Helena had to focus hard enough on Roman’s voice that she couldn’t at all pay attention to whatever he was being told. But finally, someone must have calmed him, and the next thing he said was exactly what Helena had been sent there to hear.

“Alright, alright. We’ll pull through. Double the production at the basement, and then I’ll see about tomorrow.”

“There you are!” that yell came from the open back door of the club. The bouncer that had been chasing her finally came out to find her, a bad decision for him truly.

Helena sighed. This was an interruption, a bother, but well… two birds, one stone, she thought. Perhaps she could pull off both Renee and her own plans that night.

She smirked and swiftly got herself down to the ground and slowly, confidently started walking away.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?!” the man yelled after her, still chasing, still didn’t even imagining that when Helena had him far away enough from the club she’d turn around with violent speed and attack him with power and abilities beyond her years, quickly ending his life and walking away with a smile.

* * *

After her last song, and still hearing the applause boosted by Roman Sionis, Dinah walked down from the stage and straight toward the bar, where she’d spotted Helena sitting on a stool.

“Hey there,” Dinah said with a smile, she sighed as she sat down on a stool beside Helena. After finishing a set she still felt a rush of adrenaline, excitement, something electric moving all through her body. She never got tired of that feeling. She imagine her vampire friends must feel something similar when they fed. However, Helena was merely holding a glass of water, and still, Dinah saw her own elation reflected right back at her in Helena’s eyes.

“You are _wonderful_ ,” Helena spoke almost reverently.

For once she sounded so certain that Dinah had the suspicion that Helena must have spent the better part of her set trying to find the right word. If she was hoping to make Dinah lose her breath, then it definitely was the right word.

“You’re nice, thank you,” Dinah smiled widely and in a swift move she stole Helena’s glass of water and took a sip. “Helena, would you like a drink?”

Helena took enough time thinking her answer that Dinah got slightly nervous, but finally, with a shy grimace she replied, “Maybe not here?”

The answer struck Dinah as odd, so that’s when she finally studied Helena. Her hair was a bit more disheveled than when they arrived, her clothes a bit messy, and just because she was staring so intently, Dinah noticed a bloodstain on the sleeve of Helena’s shirt.

“Agreed. Let’s go,” she said, reaching out to hold Helena’s hand and drag her away from there.

Of course, they didn’t have such luck. Roman just so happened to be lurking by the door, with his faithful rabid dog by his side, Victor Zsasz. Upon seeing them, both Helena and Dinah felt dread, but for entirely different reasons. Dinah was afraid of an uncomfortable talk. Helena was afraid to be recognized and dragged into unfinished business from a hundred years ago. Dinah attempted to stir them away, hoping they could slip through the back door unnoticed, but again, no such luck.

“Miss Lance! Leaving us already?” Roman exclaimed when he caught sight of them, eagerly waving them over with his gloved hands. “I see you’ve finally brought a friend over. I hope it’s no one that would distract you from your job. You know this place wouldn’t survive without you. _I_ couldn’t go on without you, little bird.”

As he spoke, Victor Zsasz stood silently beside him, but when Roman smiled, Victor smiled. And his smile was an awful thing that distinctly reminded Helena of Harley in her hyena shape, but much worse and not a bit likable.

“Of course not,” Dinah smiled sweetly, and Helena couldn’t believe she would dislike one of Dinah’s smiles but this is the strangest thing for her. The expression on Dinah’s face was so insincere that it amazed Helena anyone would buy it. Even the tone of her voice was different, and not at all similar to the confidence that Dinah usually exuded. However, Helena was pleased to notice the difference, to realize that Dinah did it on purpose, this was almost a game to her. “But we really gotta go now-”

“Nonsense,” he interrupted her, “You have time for a drink with me. Come on, be a good girl, sit down.”

As he spoke, Roman made gestures with his hands, and workers of the club immediately rushed to please his needs. They rushed innocent patrons out of a booth and in the blink of an eye started preparing it for Roman and company. Helena could see Dinah begin to slump her shoulders, but personally she just knew she couldn’t stand this guy, and also the risk of getting caught by Zsasz.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Sionis. I’m afraid Dinah and I have to leave right now. Have a good night.”

By the time Roman made sense of the fact that he had been interrupted, addressed, denied and left behind by a total stranger that additionally held Dinah Lance’s hand and took her away from him, well, the two women were far gone, and everyone else inside the Black Mask Club was suddenly in danger of being witness or victim to one of his rage outbursts.

* * *

As soon as the two of them were out of the club, Dinah started giggling, and once they were at a reasonable distance she burst out laughing.

“What the fuck was that?” she asked Helena, who wasn’t sure by she meant, but since Dinah was smiling she wasn’t worried. “No one speaks to Roman like that.”

“Why not? I just did.”

Dinah's expression was priceless. She would’ve believed this was just Helena being herself, a bit obvious about social cues, but truth was she noticed clearly the tilt in Helena’s head and the smirk just dying to show on her face.

“Of course you fucking did,” Dinah chuckled. She was a little breathless and she wasn’t sure when she’d dropped Helena’s hand, but she missed the contact. So Dinah took a chance and since they were already close together, she placed both hands on the lapels of Helena’s jacket. “You are….”

“What?” Helena asked in a whisper. She took one last moment to be conscious of their surrounding. They were near her bike and although Gotham’s nightlife was extremely active, they were almost alone in that street, no threats, no distractions, nothing holding her back. So Helena took a step forward, having their bodies almost touch.

Dinah hesitated though. _You’re unbelievable, you’re too hot, but too sweet, a wonder, a mystery, everything I want, everything I shouldn’t want_. She couldn’t make the words come out of her mouth.

Helena, on the other hand, didn’t mind waiting that much. She was happily staring at Dinah, studying her face, every detail. The way her eyebrows framed her eyes, the shadow of her eyelashes on the sweet sloped of her cheeks, the pair of lips that were too enticing to look at for too long. But then Helena made a mistake. Her eyes continued to travel down, down Dinah’s jawline, down and finally settling on her neck. Her eyes instinctively drew to a very precise point in Dinah’s neck and the pulse of blood beating just past the skin was drumming in Helena’s ears. She was conscious of her attraction to Dinah, but this powerful, instinctual response was different, and the combination of both? The most powerful thing Helena could remember feeling towards someone.

She leaned in almost imperceptibly, but if her body was any less skilled she would’ve fallen on her face right then. Dinah pulled away so sharply that she shocked even Helena’s heightened reflexes.

“Take me to my house, Helena,” Dinah requested, the coldness in her voice revealed it wasn’t an invitation at all.

“What were you going to say?” Helena asked quickly. She was well aware their moment was over. She was aware also that whatever attraction or tenderness that Dinah’s eyes might have shown to her before was definitely gone, and instead, she was facing brown eyes filled with disgust and a remote hint of fear that threatened to destroy Helena and absolutely erase any minimal progress and hopes she might have of accepting herself as she was. When Dinah stayed silent, Helena pleaded, “I want to know.”

Perhaps it was the desperation she saw in Helena’s expression, or the fact that lying would just be a form of fear or cowardice she refused to feel. But Dinah told what felt truest to her at the moment, “I was going to say, you are going to make me lose my mind.”

They stared at each other in silence for a good moment, neither really wanted to back down. Helena decided to take a safe route, and she didn’t really regret it. She nodded, walked toward her bike, and passed her helmet to Dinah, who easily accepted it.

If anything, the drive back was even more tense than the previous one, but this time Dinah was just as tense as Helena, no longer playful but genuinely troubled.

When they arrived, Dinah felt unusually exhausted. Helena’s effect, she guessed. She got off the bike and gave back the helmet with intentions to say goodbye and walk away without any more confrontation. Helena, apparently, had other plans. In the short bike ride, she’d time to figure out what would be the best possible thing to say.

“Dinah,” she said in a quiet voice that carried surprisingly well on a Saturday night in Gotham. “I’ve lost my mind for you already.”

Of all emotions she could feel, of all the damned emotions available to her she had to go and get a lump in her throat, Dinah cursed herself. She could be angry at Helena for being so goddamn attractive on so many levels, she could be furious at herself for being so sensitive to Helena. She could give in to her lust, or instead dwell into feelings of disgust, better yet she could focus her rage on cursing their luck, because why on Earth did her mother have to die in the hands of vampires, why did a young Helena end up swallowed by this darkness and turned into this creature, why couldn’t they have possibly met under normal circumstances, normal people acting on their feelings without having to reevaluate their entire views on life, death, and nature. So much she could feel that in the end, it made her sad. Not wanting Helena no notice that emotion in her, Dinah attempted a smile.

“Goodnight, Helena, see you soon,” she said, and quickly walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprisingly, this fic isn't all just me in love with vampire!Helena and Helena being in love with Dinah! There's an actual plot going on and everything, who knew!  
> Anyway, I really hope you guys liked this chapter! I think next one will be fun but I still I don't write it sorry lol  
> Please leave a comment if you'd like or if you want to message me on tumblr @afterlaughy please go ahead!
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


	7. I admire your dedication

“You know, it would be like, super nice of you to show up here in a good mood for once,” Harley commented with a good-natured smile as soon as she saw Helena walk through the door. “No offense, Crossbow Killer, but you’re spooking my clientele.” 

“I’m not the Crossbow Killer,” Helena groaned, “And this place is empty,” but, on second thought, she added, “and I’m sorry. You, uh, have a - this place it’s, um, it’s good.” 

While Helena sat down on a stool by the bar, Harley immediately got to preparing a drink for her, not without playfully scoffing at Helena’s attempt at a compliment, “You just have a crush on my bartender.” If Helena had been drinking she’d have spit it out at that comment. Instead, she groaned, again, and dropped her head in her arms on top of the bar. It was maybe that her frown was deeper, her angry groans angrier, or her posture even more tense than usual, but something alerted Harley that Helena was being way more _Helena_ than usual.

“Rough night?” she risked asking as soft as she could while placing a glass with a dark red liquid in front of Helena.

“Yeah,” Helena admitted, frowning at the drink in front of her. 

She took her time picking it up, even though her whole body reacted instantly to the smell, and from her mouth watering to her heart speeding up she knew she had to feed herself. Still, she took her time, because if this was her way of surviving at the very least she could kid herself into thinking she still had some control over her impulses. She would drink blood, sure, she _had_ to, but she’d do it when she decided, not when her body demanded, at least that’s what she told herself. Putting off the action of picking up the glass that deeply disgusted her mind, Helena kept talking. “Another threat arrived today. But it, um, it didn’t work.”

“What do you mean?” Harley quirked her head curiously and hopped onto the bar.

“Well, I arrived home late, or I don’t know, early this morning. I was driving around, to clear my head. So I went in and decided to sleep a while. I was woken up by a really, really strong smell of blood. So I ran outside but I found out it was raining. The rain, of course, ruined the uh, very creative mural someone painted with blood on one of the walls of my house. They wrote something, but I have no idea what it was, really.”

Harley nodded along to Helena’s story and then with an almost faraway tone she said, “Vandalism in the Bertinelli mansion. Back in the day I would’ve never believed it.”

“Yeah, there’s also a fucking _vampire_ sleeping in there,” Helena let out a dark chuckle and gave in and picked up the drink, taking a long sip of it, forcing a grimace at the taste, even if more accurately her body almost let out a whine at how good it felt.

While Helena worked on her drink, Harley studied her and thought of the right thing to say. “You would think that a hundred years were enough to make peace with this whole vamp thing,” she laughed, and was completely disregarded by Helena, so she sighed. “Fine, no jokes. But in all seriousness, Helena, I do have like a million years of experience and actual PhDs from fancy places. If you ever need to talk, I’m your gal.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Helena mumbled, not looking Harley in the eye so she wouldn’t see her resolve to resist from sharing her feelings rapidly crumbling down.

“Try me.”

“It’s too much,” Helena said, waving it off. However, she kept talking, still with her head bowed, “Everything I do feels wrong. My family would want to _kill me_ , Harley, how could I possibly cope with that knowledge? I drink human blood to survive, what kind of revolting monster does that?!”

Surprising Helena, Harley rolled her eyes, “Come on, you don’t go ‘round judging fish for breathing water to stay alive.”

“It’s completely different,” Helena replied with a tense voice since she was trying hard not to laugh.

“We’re all animals, aren’t we?” Harley insisted. “Look, Huntress, here’s the deal. Everyone struggles with being a vampire, not everyone struggles with being a Bertinelli. But nobody, _nobody_ has struggled with being Helena Bertinelli the vampire before! Now, this means there’s no right way to do it, but there’s also no wrong way to do it! You make the rules, you only have to be yourself, not to please anybody else. Listen, and I _need_ you to understand this, you ain’t doing nothing wrong by staying alive, okay?” Harley smiled, a sincere kind of smile new for Helena, but understanding that the younger vampire wasn’t one to keep the conversation going, she took the initiative to move on from the subject. “Now, are you done? Are you feeling all strong and ready to kick ass? Because the roller derby is waiting for us!”

* * *

If she was being honest, Helena felt quite silly standing there inside the roller derby track, wearing roller skates, a helmet, and all protective equipment. When she knew what she was doing, Helena was strategic, coordinated, and precise, plus she had the added bonus of heightened senses and reflexes that turned her into an impressively effective machine. However, when she had no idea what she was doing, she struggled just like anybody else. Harley had to give her a rapid-fire class on how to skate, while also skimming over the general rules of the game. In the end, Helena was left still occasionally stumbling and understanding that basically all she had to do was push away the people wearing a different color and have Harley’s back. Piece of cake.

It took two falls for Helena to realize that there were people, vampires, in Gotham, and specifically on that roller derby track that were as strong or even stronger than her. Then, it took a broken nose and a proud high-five from Harley for that people to understand that Helena was not somebody to mess with. If she was a relatively young vampire, she made up for it by having had intense training for most of her life and channeling all her troubled thoughts and feelings into rage, which came in handy at the sport.

Helena was a fighter, that much was clear, and Harley was having the time of her life playing off of her energy. Helena followed instructions and had great instincts and to put it simply, and quite literally, they were kicking ass. The crowd was loving it as well. They were cheering louder than ever for the complete chaos that Harley’s team was causing that night. Renee, Dinah, and Cass arrived at some point. They were almost a distraction, since Helena didn’t want to somehow disappoint Renee, didn’t want to further deteriorate her image in front of Dinah, and even less wanted to scare the kid, Cass.

But Harley quickly noticed her sudden hesitation and took a moment to tell her, “Don’t get shy on me now, Bertinelli. This is good! You’re proving yourself! You are in control of your strength, you know how to have fun, and right now you’re comfortable being exactly who you are. Time to show off, doll!”

While Helena wasn’t completely sold on that logic, she didn’t have time to think too hard on it though. They had to get back at it, and Helena was surprised to find herself genuinely enjoying it all. It was quick, it was relentless, it was demanding and exciting. There was a thrill to it similar to fighting someone but it was rewarding in a different way, it left her feeling… better. With an unexplainable urge to smile, instead of feeling sick and wanting to cry. It was plain and simple more exciting than just being angry. Helena could punch, and push, and pull people, and Harley screaming instructions was rewarding, and the roar from the crowd was numbing her innecessary senses instead of overwhelming her. She could just focus on being fast and strong and fighting because it was enjoyable, not because someone had to come out of it dead.

The problem was, the other team was not enjoying themselves half as much. Harley had earned herself fear and respect all over Gotham, but it did not mean she was well-liked all around. People on the other team, competitive, annoyed by Harley’s proud and loud attitude and the new grumpy rookie on her team, were desperate for a turnaround. So, when Helena caused her second broken nose of the night, the entire team jumped on her. They went on the offensive, one by one throwing themselves at Helena until they had her on the ground. She put on a fight though, and her teammates joined in in her support. It was about to turn into a big disaster, the crowd was starting to leave the place running and the fight was just getting worse. That’s when they heard a laugh, a feral, animalistic laugh. And a hyena jumped into the messy bunch of people fighting at the center of the roller derby rink.

“Fuck, this got out of hand,” Renee cursed as the rest of the crowd rushed away from them. “Cass, Canary, we gotta do something.”

“People can find the exit themselves, we gotta break up the fight,” Dinah stated, already walking fearlessly toward the door to the rink.

“I can handle Harley!” Cass excitedly announced, rushing in, ignoring Renee’s protests for her safety. “Harley! Come on, come here! It’s me! It’s Cass!” She yelled, from a safe enough distance.

The hyena had been busy pulling bodies away from the pile as gently, though that wasn’t much, as she could. Hearing the kid’s voice, however, always snatched her attention from the rest of the world. Not that she was usually good at handling her attention either way. The hyena dropped the body that she had been carrying, and happily trotted toward Cass.

While Cass used her status as Harley Quinn’s newest weakness, out of the very few she had, to try and lure the hyena away from the pile of angry bodies fighting their friend, Renee and Dinah were hard at work pulling bodies away one by one.

At the bottom of it all was Helena, but she wasn't exactly having a bad time. She was Helena Bertinelli and she was fighting about a dozen vampires at once. She had actually dedicated her life to killing vampires, for her family, maybe they would be proud after all, maybe they wouldn’t want to kill her, not too badly. But the outstanding point wasn’t even that. Her family had drifted to the back of her mind. Helena was fighting vampires and they were fighting back, and some of them were fighting _with_ her.

They were all angry, punching and kicking with all their might, but at the bottom of it was a deep shared understanding that this wasn't a deadly business, they were in this together, they were all part of something, one single entity just having one more argument with itself. In all her life, Helena had known mostly just pain, grief, rage, regret, but at that moment right there and for once, for one moment finally, it all faded to the background. For once she could focus on existing and fighting for her life and enjoying it. She felt she could stay there and live without questioning why, if she deserved it, how to do it and what living even meant to her. She decided, at that moment, that if she could bottle up this feeling and add a drop or two in each drink she takes it would be fine, it would taste better, and maybe she wouldn’t hurt, hate or doubt herself so badly.

Then finally, finally, finally Renee and Dinah pulled away the last of the broken-nosed skaters away from Helena. And there in the middle of the track, they found her. Helena was kneeling, her face was bruised and bleeding, her clothes torn and her helmet and skates were nowhere in sight, but when she finally managed to look up at them, she was smiling. "That was fun," Helena said, grinning in a way none of them had seen her.

"Holy shit," Renee chuckled, "You're really one of a kind, Bertinelli."

"Come on, let's get you up," Dinah added in a soft voice, kneeling down to help Helena, "Do you want me to drive you home?"

Helena nodded, her entire body was burning, she needed to rest and probably a drink, but she kept smiling. That is, until Harley spoke up again.

"Yeah! Let's go! I always wanted to enter the Bertinelli mansion!" She exclaimed just as she was finishing wrapping torn clothes around her to cover up her body.

Instantly, Helena frowned, and Dinah and Renee hesitated as well, but to their surprise, Cass spoke up next. "Oh my God, yes! That place is _iconic_. Can we really go? Please?"

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence, with all of them considering the suggestion. Harley wasn't still in the right state of mind. In fact, she considered she was already doing too much for them by resisting the urge to go after one of the skaters, or at least begin laughing hyena-like again. She just genuinely wanted to see that infamous place, as well as Cass. Renee wanted to respect Helena's space and privacy, but she couldn't deny she was curious to visit the old house once again. Dinah had different reasons to hesitate. The previous day she had almost crossed a line with Helena, and it sent her down a treacherous spiral of complex thoughts, memories of her mother, and her own experiences and perspective on life and humanity. Still, she couldn't help it, she was curious, she cared, she wanted to figure out her own emotions and she was almost ready to accept to herself that maybe she wanted to figure that out _with_ Helena.

"What do you say, Killer? Sleepover tonight?" Harley insisted with a wide smile since no one protested and because she had too much adrenaline on her body to stay still and silent too long.

"Sure..." Helena drew out the word, but it was enough, it was settled. The five of them would go to the Bertinelli mansion together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is even less proofread than usual but i love my vampire babies  
> anyway im really enjoying writing this fic, i already started the next chapter, i hope this will be an enjoyable distraction in these difficult times, sending love to everyone reading  
> thanks for reading and please keep leaving comments because they make me So happy! and i promise to reply always


	8. Poor Little Vampire

During the entire car ride to the Bertinelli mansion, Helena regretted her decision to let her friends visit the place. At least she didn't regret calling them friends anymore, now she could know that for sure, after they've pretty much intervened to possibly safe her life or at least save her from several injuries two times. But the house was _different_. That house was cursed to her, it was the one place in the world that caused her the most pain. Ironically, as everything in her life seemed to be, the house was also sacred to her, the last place where she'd been genuinely happy, genuinely human, genuinely herself and part of a family.

This troubling duality reminded Helena of Harley's words, about how her struggle was pretty unique, and how maybe that was okay. Her friends had the wonderful and unexpected ability to consistently make Helena feel like things, life and herself, were or would be okay. So she figured it was okay to let them in. Let them into the her home, as awful and wonderful as it was. Maybe let them into her life, her heart, but that was a thought for another day. They had arrived.

Helena didn't feel anything remarkable anymore upon arriving, Cass felt simple curiosity and wonder. Harley was terribly excited, and although she wouldn’t dare say it to Helena, she was in some way excited at the prospect of irrupting into the house of what used to be the most powerful family of vampire hunters in Gotham, a group of people that back then wanted nothing as badly as her head on a silver platter. For Renee, it was a bit more complicated. This house was... something. Back in the day, it had been already scary, even before the extraordinary tragedy and the hundred years of abandonment. But for her, it had been good. She had good memories of the Bertinelli family. They were fucking terrifying when they wanted to be, but not to her, never. Lastly, there was Dinah driving the car ad doing her best at not thinking too hard about what was going on.

As soon as the car passed through the gates, Harley couldn't help herself. She pretty much moaned at all that this stood for, "Huntress, with all due respect, stepping in here, invited, officially makes me the baddest undead motherfucker in Gotham!" She sounded way too excited. Helena didn't love it, but she didn't fight it.

They parked the car at the front and got out. Helena just wanted to get in already, but of course, the others stood by the front door, admiring the front of the infamous mansion. They did it in silence, except for Cass, who, as always following some of Harley’s steps said, "Helena, with all due respect, this place looks like shit."

Harley and Dinah coughed to hide their laughs, and Helena forced a smile, "It looks worse on the inside," she said, leading them in.

"Holy shit, what happened to this place?"

"A massacre, Montoya, didn't you read the news?"

"I'm guessing you do _not_ have Wi-Fi here, do you?"

"I'm not much into the Gothic style you have going on but... it's... nice."

While her friends dropped their comments on the unkept (and that was a monumental understatement) state of the place, Helena tried to look at it from the eyes of a stranger. She wasn't a movie expert, but it did look like the classic horror movie haunted house. Too much furniture, mostly covered in cobwebs. Squeaking floorboards, creepy statues that were pretty much gargoyles, lavish dusty rugs, and the occasional worn-down but once-expensive piece of art. This was just the first room, and it didn't get any better if they set out to explore the house. However, that could wait.

"There's someone else here," Harley announced first, with Helena and Renee quickly figuring out that she was correct.

"Harley, keep them alive," was all Renee said, knowing that the crazier one of the group would surely get a headstart.

One second they heard the breaking of a window, and before another second Harley rushed out of the room, followed by Helena and Renee, and then Dinah and Cass, they were all running full speed outside. Someone was at the house, he felt them arrive and jumped out of a window, but his feet had barely touched the ground when Harley tackled him down. He managed to get up just because she was told to let him live, but Helena and Renee arrived quickly and even though he put up a fight they easily surrounded him, kept him in check. 

They didn't know how to neutralize him though. Helena wasn't carrying any of her weapons. They were content just kicking his ass until he would surrender, until Dinah stepped in. She got to kick him, but when he sensed she was just human he jumped at her. Her friends tried to step in, but it was completely unnecessary. When he got close enough, Dinah threw a punch, but she didn't mean to hit him, she meant to hold a talisman close enough to him that he screamed. He screamed loud and full of pain and in a few seconds he had passed out.

Satisfied, Dinah looked around with a smile. Three of her friends were all on the ground, terror was written all over their faces for a second, but they were okay, and they got over it quickly... quick enough.

"Good job, Cass," Dinah said in a sing-song voice, throwing the charm back at Cass, who swiftly caught it and placed it back in a tiny bag that dulled its powers and then in one of her pockets.

"I love this kid!" Harley exclaimed, stumbling to a standing position. She was a little breathless, but Helena and Renee looked a bit more stunned still. So she grinned, and said, "Well, now that _that_ is dealt with, what do you guys say if we officially start this party, huh? Ladies night! I sneaked in a few bottles of our favorite drinks in the trunk of Dinah's car. Now, let go have some fun!"

* * *

The first part of the night was spent on Cass insisting she didn’t have a bedtime, Dinah improvising cocktails out of the few bottles that Harley had sneaked in the trunk of her own car, and Harley insisting that they needed to order pizza, which resulted in them having to call three different places until someone agreed to deliver to the Bertinelli mansion. After a very pale, shaking, thoroughly terrified teenager delivered the pizzas, the women sat down to eat in Helena’s kitchen.

“So, this place is… _liveable_?” Renee asked Helena, trying to be subtle and failing, but at least showing a bit of genuine concern.

Helena sipped from her glass and then shrugged, “I don’t need much.”

Cass spoke up then, through a mouthful of pizza, “I always thought Harley was the coolest vampire in Gotham, but you are like European, always dress in black, and live in an abandoned, creepy house? _Cool_.”

“Come on!” Harley feigned deep offense, “Good luck getting the Crossbow Killer to act as your pet hyena to impress other kids!” Cass waved her off and failed to fight a smile to break on her face.

Helena looked down, embarrassed with the attention. Once again, it was Dinah who mercifully came to her rescue.

“This place looks like it’d be infested with actual vats. Is it?” She smirked, and proceeded to take a bite of her pizza slice.

This time, Helena couldn’t keep a corner of her lips from turning up. “Yes,” she replied.

“Aww!!” Harley cried out, even Renee made a similar pleased noise, “That’s _adorable_! Can I meet them?” she jumped out of her seat, holding two slices of pizza in one hand and a half-filled bottle in the other. “I’m going! Babies, where are you?”

While the most energetic of the group walked away, the others couldn’t help but laugh.

“Okay, okay, but on a serious note, are you really okay, living here?” Renee pícked up where the conversation had derailed, “If you ever want to stay elsewhere, or just if you need help working on this place, you got me, and I’ll bring these crazy bunch with me.” She raised her glass and finished off her drink.

“Thank you,” Helena nodded, seriously.

“I wouldn’t mind painting a wall if it means I get to visit this place again,” Cass added, finishing her pizza and going for her glass of soda.  
“Oh, you would paint _one_ wall? That’s so generous of you Cass! Careful overworking yourself,” Dinah teased her

This earned laughs from the other three, and Dinah, although she tried her best, she couldn’t ignore the fact that Helena smiled or laughed at everything she said, not with all the others. She felt a certain warmth in her chest at the thought that this beautiful woman paid special attention to her. A voice in her head made her realize that if she noticed how Helena reacted to everything she said, it was because _she_ also paid special attention to Helena.

“Sure, let’s go,” Helena said, shrugging and moving to her feet, followed by Renee and Cass.

Dinah realized she’d zoned out, thinking about Helena, and missed a part of the conversation.

“I promise I won’t tell anybody,“ Cass said, “but I can’t promise I won’t take anything.”

The words got her a playful smack in the head from Renee. “I’ll check your pockets before we leave here.”

“Yeah right.”

Helena and Cass walked ahead while Dinah tried to figure out what she was walking to. That is, until Renee hung back to walk beside her and whisper, “Don’t think I didn’t notice you zoning out back there. I know that look, Canary.”

“You don’t know shit, Montoya” Dinah rolled her eyes, and avoided to meet her friend’s look.

“Kid, I’ve seen _generations_ of Lance women falling in love. You like Helena, that wasn’t a question.” Renee had a smug look in her face. The two of them had stopped walking and were standing by the top of the stairs that lead to a basement. “Plus, I can literally hear your heartbeat pick up every time you look at her.”

Shock took over Dinah’s face and her brain went on overdrive, “Do you- She could.. hear it too?!” She whispered-yelled, but was met with nothing but laughs from the vampire. “Oh! Fuck you, Montoya! Seriously?!”

When her laughter subsided, Renee said, “Sorry, sorry. It’s just obvious! And she’s even more of a goner for you, you know that, right?” After a pause, she added, more seriously, “Dinah, it’s okay.”

“It’s isn’t,” Dinah replied with the painful truth.

“It _is_ ,” Renee insisted, “This happens. You would be good for her. And I know she might not look the part, but she wouldn’t be that bad to you.”

After waiting a moment, Dinah finally met her friend’s eyes, “Yeah… But is ‘ _not that bad_ ’ enough?”

Renee looked like she was about to say something else, but they were interrupted by Cass’ voice. “Montoya! Canary! Hurry up! The Bertinelli secret torture room is waiting!”

_Right_ , Dinah thought, _so that’s what we’re doing now_.

“It’s not a secret torture-” they heard Helena begin to say on her regular _barely-keeping-it-together_ , _about-to-lose-my-shit_ voice, but she interrupted herself, on a completely different, thoughtful tone, “Well…”

* * *

It turned out that a visit to the secret room where the Bertinelli family kept most things that made them the greatest family of vampire hunters in Gotham, wasn’t exactly a fun group activity.

By the time Helena opened the door hidden behind the basement stairs, Harley had joined them. But she was strangely quiet and frowned as she watched Helena, Dinah, and Cass walk the threshold. When Renee took a step forward, Harley grabbed her arm and stopped her.

“We can’t go in,” Harley said. When she was met with questioning stares from the rest of the group she gestured vaguely at the room. “I can feel a… big ‘ _No_ ’ energy.” More inquisitive glances thrown her way made her elaborate, “ _Fine_. An enchantment of sorts.”

“Are you sure?” Helena asked her, unaware of such a fact.

Harley rolled her eyes, scoffed, and took two steps forwards, standing right at the door of the place. She immediately went rigid and smiled, but a sound between a moan and wince came from her through gritted teeth. After just a couple of seconds, she stepped back, sighed, and gave them one of her most delirious-looking smiles. “Oh yeah. It burns. If you’re not into that, Montoya, I suggest you desist.”

“But Helena came in. Isn’t she as vampire as you too?” Dinah wondered.

“Maybe,” Cass was the one to answer, “But she’s also of Bertinelli blood.” She shrugged, clearly knowledgeable with all things of that business but not keen on speaking more than necessary, already distracted by everything she saw in that room.

Renee hummed thoughtfully, “That would explain why just this room was left untouched after- um, that day.” They all felt a chill in the air at the knowledge that they were standing by the only living person with the power to open that door. “Go on. Harley and I will wait upstairs.”

“Aw, Montoya, you don’t need no excuses for some alone time with me! You could’ve just asked!” Harley joked as the two of them went back up the stairs.

Once inside the room, Dinah figured her friends were better off away from it, and she couldn’t understand how Helena was so comfortable in there, she personally wasn’t. It wasn’t a secret torture room. But it did expand a bit on what Dinah thought was one of Gotham’s darkest sides. There were all kinds of weapons, instruments, artifacts, magical pieces, the oddest objects, and even fully-stocked bookshelves on… how to kill vampires. It was no wonder that Helena harbored a deep trauma and troubled perception of herself if she knew this room existed and that her whole family used to know a thousand and one ways to murder her if they wanted to.

Their stay in the room wasn’t that long, _thankfully_ , Dinah thought. She watched Helena go about it with the stoic indifference of a bored museum guide, while Cass was genuinely marveled at most things she saw, asking plenty of questions, or straight-out mocking the old, old school weapons.

At one point, Dinah stood by a sort of cabinet that within held dozen of chams and talisman just like the ones in Cass’ pockets. This caught Dinah’s attention. She turned to stare at the proudly exhibited weapons, silver knives, swords, bullets, and arrows. There even were a couple of goddamned barrels that just had to be filled with holy water. Obviously vampires wouldn’t be comfortable in this room.

“Helena?” Dinah called her over while Cass busied herself checking out some books. “Aren’t you bother by all this stuff? Doesn’t it… hurt?”

The taller woman shrugged as if it was nothing, _worse_ , as if it was something right. “It’s fine,” she said.

“Helena,” Dinah whispered with as much conviction as she could muster and placed a gentle hand on the other woman’s arm, “You don’t deserve to be in pain.”

For a moment, Helena looked touched by the words, but she was still a stubborn woman, and also genuinely curious. “How do you know that?”

Dinah sighed and dropped her hand, but she still smiled a little, “I have no idea how…” She had no idea about many things concerning Helena, but, “But I stand by it,” she added, her smile growing, and hoping to sound convincing.

“Cass?” Helena called out immediately after, “I don’t feel very good, can we leave?”

Helena didn’t even turn to ask that question, she was still looking directly at Dinah, and when they heard Cass’ agree, Helena returned Dinah’s smiles with one of her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternative title for this chapter: Dinah Lance, _almost_ ready to admit she has feelings
> 
> Thanks for reading!!  
> Once again I ended up writing more than I planned to, so I split the chapter in two, which means the next chapter is Almost ready! I might try to update my other fic first tho, so you can check that one if you haven't :)  
> Let me know what you thought!


	9. Don't you know?

When Helena, Dinah, and Cass made it out and went back to the foyer of the big house, they found Renee by herself, engrossed on her phone.

“Where’s Harley?” Cass asked her.

“I lost her,” Renee shrugged, putting away her phone, “I swear she’s a fucking toddler.”

The four of them barely had time to laugh and make a small bit of conversation when they heard Harley. She was standing at the top of the stairs, with a long, sumptuous curtain draped over her shoulders. “Behold… Harleen Quinzel,” she exclaimed in a playfully dramatic tone that had the youngest of the group immediately cracking up. The rest were still on the fence, fearing the woman was about to cross a terrible line with her mockery. “Vampire Queen of Gotham City,” Harley continued presenting herself as she slowly descended the stairs, “Ultimate successful invader of the good, old, decrepit Bertinelli mansion. I shall declare myself new possessor of these lands.”

By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs and met with the rest of the group, well, it wasn’t the warm welcome she was expecting after her outstanding, _oscar-worthy_ performance.

“What?!” she exclaimed, looking around.

Dinah was trying to get Cass to stop laughing and Renee had a hand covering her face as she mumbled, “Fucking clown…” Meanwhile, Helena…

Helena was standing even more still and rigid than Harley had been under the spell of the Bertinelli’s secret room, her fists were tightened, her jaw tightened, and her stone-cold stare trailed from Harley’s smirk, to the ruined curtains, and then up the staircase, seemingly taking in the whole house with one look. She walked up to Harley, she stood taller, but Harley couldn’t be less intimidated by her, though that didn’t make her any less uncomfortable or worried she had hurt, or was about to hurt, her new friend. That’s when Helena finally spoke, almost in a whisper.

“You know, I will never be okay with the fact that my family was murdered. But that doesn’t mean I ever did love what they did for a living. Or this house, for that matter. I _hated_ this house.”

“You hated this house?” Renee exclaimed, voicing everyone’s thoughts, “I mean, you hated your family’s business?”

Helena looked as confused as the rest. She thought it’d be obvious. “Of course,” she tilted her head, “Kids… they thought vampires were cool. They thought my parents killed fun things, or they’d just be scared of me. And this place was a Gothic castle, or war headquarters, not a home! I hated it. I just wanted to be a kid, not a killer-to-be just… a _kid_.”

Once again and without meaning to, Helena had left her friends speechless. Cass had no idea what to say and didn’t want to try, she trusted the others could handle it. Dinah, hard as she tried, couldn’t find words of comfort. She’d had her fair share of trouble and trauma throughout her life but she’d been lucky enough to enjoy being a kid when that was all she had to be. Similar things were going through Renee’s mind. She might look older, but she was much younger than Harley, and at this point, she didn’t even know where she stood with Helena. She could be supportive but she wasn’t the best with words, she wasn’t about to try to mother creatures of hundreds of years. That’s when Harley stepped up.

“Aw, killer,” she cooed, taking a step forward and placing her hands on Helena’s shoulders, “you wanna have the cathartic experience of trashing your parents’ house to try to break from your traumatic past and also work on your identity independently from life-long unfair expectations thrown on you by family members and your own self-loathing perception of yourself?” This earned a shy, sincere but slightly confused smile from the taller woman. “What’s the thing you hated _most_ from this place, huh? What used to make baby Helena so pissed off she wanted to scream?”

Helena pointed upward and everyone looked up, “That ridiculous fucking extravagant shitty _chandelier_.”

* * *

Dinah found out it took too much effort to try and fight off her smile, so she was grinning the entire time watching the scene in front of her. She was sitting on the stairs, sharing laughs with Cass as they watched their friends. Harley was laughing like a maniac, dangling upside down from the truthfully ridiculously big chandelier that hung from the ceiling of the Bertinelli mansion and was swinging at a certainly dangerous speed. Renee was standing, holding on tightly, worriedly staring at the ceiling holding them up and yelling every curse in her repertoire. Helena was sitting on it, yanking the crystals out of it and throwing them to the walls with all her strength, resentment and anger coming off of her and leaving behind a laughing mess of a woman that maybe, just _maybe_ , was the reason Dinah was smiling so much.

“They’re crazy,” Dinah said fondly, leaning back on the stairs.

“Yeah,” Cass agreed, she yawned then, fighting sleep and still laughing.

“Cass, can I ask you something?” Dinah said after a moment, “Why do you carry those amulets with you at all times?”

“Just in case,” the kid shrugged, but then she noticed Dinah’s frown settle on Harley, “Just in case I run into _other_ vampires. Not Harley!”

“Why- _How_ do you trust her so much?” Dinah wondered, knowing fully well that the small change of that first word in her question made the whole difference.

Cass didn’t catch on that though. “You don’t trust Harley?” she whisper-shouted instead, “She could kill you for that, you know?”

“Exactly my point!” Dinah laughed. “Don’t you constantly feel like human bait? You are a kid! You hang out with someone who could kill you at any minute!”

The younger girl rolled her eyes as vehemently as she knew how to. “Dude! Literally _every_ person on the planet could kill you if they tried hard enough. These dumb asses aren’t special just cause they have fangs.” She then watched amusedly how Dinah opened and closed her mouth, at a loss for words. “Have you ever thought about the fact that you could also kill any of them if you _really_ wanted to? Hell, I could do it. But I don’t, we don’t, cause, like, that’s wrong, Canary. Living in a society and stuff. Were you raised by wolves?”

“Oh, fuck you, kid,” Dinah laughed, lightly shoving Cass’ shoulder with her own.

It was easier to laugh about it than try to answer. It was easier to watch their friends eventually fall down along with the massive chandelier, and dust themselves off as if it was nothing. It was easier to follow Harley’s lead and go around trashing the Bertinelli mansion, more than it already was, breaking chairs and tables, ripping old paintings, slashing cushions, and breaking everything they could get their hands on. It was easier to laugh, to watch them laugh, to have fun and not think about anything else. It was easier, until Cass passed out in happy exhaustion on a broken-down couch, and Harley left to carry her to an actual bed upstairs, just as Renee left to check on the intruder they’d left tied and immobilized on a small room, and then it was just Dinah and Helena alone. Dinah expected it to be hard, to feel uncomfortable, insecure, even unsafe. But much to her surprise she found out that sitting down with Helena, letting down her guard and in exchange getting a glimpse past Helena’s own emotional walls, well, it was one of the easiest things she’d ever done.

* * *

At first, Dinah did try to talk to Helena about the house, and her past. She couldn’t help but feel bad for the woman that could destroy the house she grew up in without batting an eye or feeling any sort of emotional attachment to a single object in there. Helena insisted she was tired of talking about it though. That’s when Dinah decided that she, too, wouldn’t mind talking about light and fun subjects for once.

“So you know all those languages… because you’re old or because you’re a nerd?” she asked Helena. Dinah was delighted to see her blush.

“I just travel a lot,” Helena replied shyly. “You’re in a new country, exposed to its culture, living a life there, it’s not that difficult to learn the language.”

_Aha, deflecting. You cute, old nerd,_ thought Dinah.

“So, you’ve seen the world. Is there something you could possibly like about Gotham?” Dinah posed another question, and was thoroughly amused at how long Helena thought about it and came empty-handed. “It kinda matches your aesthetic, I guess,” she playfully pointed out.

Helena scoffed, “What do _you_ like about Gotham?”

“It’s unique,” Dinah shrugged, “It might be chaos, but I don’t think I could live in a perfectly nice city. No. This one’s special.”

Helena was thoughtful for a moment, and when she met Dinah’s eyes she said, “Then I guess this city’s a bit like you too.”

They shared a smile then, and the warmth they felt simultaneously on their insides was enough to take over any possible overthinking, or doubts, or pretty much any other thoughts they could have. At that moment nothing else mattered, or existed. It was all just each other’s smiles.

They were sitting in one of the parlors of the big mansion. The place was a mess and the fireplace on one wall was filled with bits and pieces of things that weren’t meant to end up in a fireplace. Helena and Dinah had been sitting down talking for a while, facing each other, sitting on the ground with their backs resting against broken or upside-down sofas. Dinah took that moment as an opportunity to crawl forward and sit right beside Helena, their shoulders not touching yet.

“What do you like more?” Helena blurted out, genuinely wanting to get more about Dinah, “Singing at the club, or bartending for Harley?”

Dinah was thoughtful for a moment but then she made a grimace, “Please don’t tell Harley…” her face eased when she heard Helena chuckle. “Listen, that club isn’t the best, and my boss is the worst, I know, I am well aware of that. But singing… that outshines bartending, any time. It is my favorite thing in the world, no matter where I get to perform. It’s the one thing I hope I do for the rest of my life.”

It was impossible for Dinah not to notice the small changes in Helena’s expression when she heard that last sentence. A mention of mortality. Helena was confused about her own life, the last thing she wanted was to think about Dinah’s life possibly ending, let alone living long enough to witness that.

“I don’t know if there’s anything I’d want to do for my entire life,” she mumbled, it was the only thing she could think of.

“You’re lucky you’re almost immortal then,” Dinah said, “You can do whatever you want.”

“ _Lucky?_ ” Helena repeated, unsure with Dinah's choice of words.

“Yeah?” Dinah insisted, she knew she might be about to cross a line, so she reached out to hold Helena’s hand, to hopefully make it better, easier for both of them. “I haven’t said anything because I know you don’t exactly love your vampy situation but… it is kind of cool.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah! Man, all the things I would do if I could live that long… I would… I’d be- Helena do you realize how _powerful_ you actually are? You genuinely are… _magical_.” The words definitely had some enchanting effect on Helena, she couldn’t stop staring at Dinah, and on the tip of her tongue she felt the statement that at that moment Dinah was the most magical thing in her world, but before she could say it, Dinah asked her, “There’s has to be something about it that you like, yeah?”

“Sure…” Helena frowned lightly, “I mean… there’s strength and… that could be- um, fun… and… do you think someday I could turn into a hyena like Harley?”

Although her question had been serious, it had Dinah laughing loudly, “Oh, Helena, I don’t really see you as the hyena type.”

“No?” Helena wondered, genuinely curious about the way Dinah saw her.

“Well, to be honest, when I was a kid, I just thought all of you could turn into vats and that was it,” she shrugged, happy to just see Helena chuckle at that. “Maybe you could be a panther.”

Helena smiled, happy with the answer, probably happy with whatever Dinah would have said. “What would you like to be?”

“Well I do like big cats,” Dinah replied with a playful wink that had Helena blushing, “A leopard, maybe? Something like that. Can you imagine?” She laughed, happy to entertain Helena in this light-hearted conversation.

“Actually I do,” Helena smiled, but after a moment, it turned mischievous. “Did you just seriously not answered a canary?”  
Helena’s words had the two of them uncontrollably laughing for a minute. By the time they regained their breath and continued talking, their shoulders had inevitably come together, and Dinah was now leaning against Helena, their bodies supporting each other. The conversation continued just like that, for a while. They managed to get to know each other, to lightly touch on delicate subjects but coming out with only enjoyable highlights, like Dinah’s favorite memories of her mother, and Helena’s funniest anecdotes about living with only men that were thousands of years old.

Helena listened to Dinah talk about her favorite music, even if she didn’t know much about it, she could enjoy Dinah singing bits of her favorite verses. Just as Dinah enjoyed listening to Helena talk about European architecture that she’d personally seen and had more than enough time to study, even though she couldn’t exactly share the interest in it. Helena complimented Dinah’s valor and strength in fighting, Dinah admired Helena’s dedication to learning fighting styles and not just depend on her supernatural strength, then teased her for her choice of weapon, a crossbow, _not_ a bow and arrow.

When Dinah started getting sleepy and the lighthearted playfulness increased while the emotional barriers diminished, they went on and on. Dinah shared about her last break-up, and the first time she kissed a girl, it was her high school prom, even though her date was a boy and the other girl deeply regretted it. Helena managed to share a memory of her little brother and was surprised to not feel like she wanted to sob and kill herself at the end of it, then she laughed with Dinah as she told the story of how once she bit a man that had such a bad smell she swore she’d only feed from women from then on. That was the last story they got to share that night.

“I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable,” Helena mumbled at the end, fearing that a simple mention of the fact she fed from human blood was enough to send Dinah running away from her, again. Dinah, who at the point, barely awake, had her eyes closed, a soft smile on her lips, and her head resting on Helena’s shoulder.

“Nope,” Dinah mumbled sleepily. “Those girls were _so_ lucky to have you.” She smirked, not having to look to know that Helena would be furiously blushing at the moment. Regretfully, she didn’t have the strength to carry that conversation any further. She twisted her body a little bit to fit more comfortably against Helena’s side, wrapping her arms around one of Helena’s. “What if you weren’t a panther but a cute, angry, little black cat…”

A couple of seconds later, Dinah was asleep, and Helena, well, she was thoroughly scared of the unfamiliar, beautiful but intimidating emotions she was feeling for Dinah, but it was nothing compared to the amount of happiness she was feeling at the moment, even more unfamiliar, but it couldn’t feel any better. It felt _right_ , she felt perfectly happy right there where she was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i am specially proud of Cass' speech to Dinah. in my mind that's the one moment where Dinah goes "oh shit that makes sense ugh fineeee guess i'll go fall in love with the vampire and that's okay"
> 
> also fun fact, i almost got cass kidnapped on this chapter bc it would've fit perfectly but that would have interfered with my plans of helena and dinah going on a date soon so i said fuck no
> 
> that's it! i relaly hope you guys liked it! thank you everyone whos reading and leaving comments you all make me so happy! i hope this fic does a little to brighten your days


	10. That I'm a moon in daylight

When the light started streaming through the broken windows of the Bertinelli mansion and the old elegant and heavy curtains were no longer there to cover, Helena realized that maybe, just maybe, destroying every corner of her home was not as practical as it had been cathartic.

She’d barely slept during the night and morning. Dinah had stayed cuddled up to her the entire time, save for a couple of intervals where they grabbed a few of the remaining cushions and pillows from the sofas and laid them on the ground so they’d be more comfortable. Helena was surprised to see Dinah had slept soundly, even more surprised to find the woman completely at ease and comfortable to give up consciousness in her arms.

All good things came to an end, though, and Helena wasn’t thrilled at all when at some point a few hours later Renee, followed closely behind by Harley, showed up in that room.

“Tell me you managed to sleep at least for a minute there,” Renee told her, thoroughly amused by the image of Dinah profoundly asleep, and Helena laying there impossibly tense.

“Oh, I just _gotta_ take a picture of that!” Harley whispered dramatically, pulling out her phone. Helena tried to cover her face with one of her arms, not knowing she ended up making the picture even better, it seemed like they were both asleep. “You lovebirds!” Harley cooed.

The noise and the camera finally stirred Dinah from her sleep and she pulled away from her place in Helena’s arms slowly but easily, with an ease and grace that left Helena dumbfounded. She had stayed as still as possible the entire time they were there so as to not disturb Dinah, she was mostly freaking out the entire time. She’d thought that after Dinah moved away she’d found a bit of calm finally, but she was proved wrong.

Now she was seeing first hand the way Dinah looked in the morning, all soft, and sleepy and calm, with her hair a perfect mess, her eyes looked just like dawn, so deep but so light and it was like the entire room looked better just because Dinah was staring at it. The best part was catching sight of her first smile of the day, the way it formed even slower than usual, the way it seemed to wake up every muscle in her beautiful face and light up ever color in and around her alive. It did make Helena a bit sad that Dinah had been looking at Renee and Harley when she smiled. With all the passion and conviction that Helena put on everything she set her mind to, she decided she’d do everything in her power for a second chance to get to see Dinah wake up, for a chance to be the lucky one who earned Dinah’s first smile of the day. She would mark it as one of her greatest successes in life.

“Don’t you two have something better to do?” Dinah asked her friends playfully.

“Oh yes we do, Canary, that’s why we came to wake you two up!” Harley replied.

“It’s almost noon and we each have a life to get back to so…” Renee smirked.

Shaking her head, Dinah stood up, stretched, made Helena forget how to breathe for a moment. While their friends watched in utter amusement, Dinah turned to Helena, who was still paralyzed on the ground, and tilted her head, “Need any help getting up?” Helena shook her head slowly, she missed the feeling of Dinah’s skin. “No?” Helena nodded slowly, she missed Dinah’s scent, the rhythm of Dinah’s heart. “Helena!” Dinah chuckled and extended her hand, finally snapping Helena out of her thoughts and getting her up.

Renee and Harley were still laughing by the time Harley forcefully pushed Renee to the ground and yelled, “Get down!”

A second later, bullets started to rain on the house. They were coming through every window and the front door, and the noise was deafening.

“Not fair!” Harley complained and her voice was drowned by the shot.

Then, in the brief moments that it took the attackers to reload their guns and kick down the door, it was plenty of time for the women to gear up and jump into action. A hyena took down the first men that walked through the door. Helena might have been at home, but since receiving the threats she knew to leave weapons scattered around the house, hiding in plain sight for easy access for her. She grabbed a crossbow, prepared with silver bolts, and threw a pair of silver daggers behind her. Renee grabbed one, and passed the other, along with her trusted gun to Dinah. None of them hesitated to jump into the fight.

A very interesting fight, that was. Considering the attackers had been dead sure that Helena would be alone at home. Considering they feared and respected their boss, but feared Harley Quinn as a hyena even more. Considering they didn’t mind showing up to scare and capture a woman they hadn’t even considered a threat, but that by the time they saw the first few of their buddies hit the ground, most of them instantly started to retreat. Even then, crossbow bolts, bullets, and an angry hyena took care of at least hurting a few of them.

If Renee would have time to interrogate any of them, as she would have loved to do, they might have said something along the lines of, “She was _supposed_ to be alone! We didn’t know it’d be a _group_! We didn’t think they’d fight back! We were supposed to be a _distraction_ so two of us could come through the back and rescue the guy they kidnapped!” Hearing that, they might have stopped that from happening, or at least they would have arrived quicker at the room where Cass had been sleeping.

Up until the end, Dinah held her ground on the fight, but the second one of the vampires started to get the upper hand, a crossbow bolt on his neck, and a shove from Helena got him off of her. What Helena found then wasn’t Dinah’s smile, but an extremely worried expression as she asked, “Where’s Cass?”

Helena dropped and forgot absolutely everything in order to run and find the girl. She’d never been so fast in her life, she’d never felt such a violently sudden desperation. It was an entirely new shape of her passion and motivation, and this didn’t feel as bad. Before arriving at the room all she had time to think was that she couldn’t allow one more kid to get hurt under this roof.

In all her haste, Helena nearly knocked down the very kid she was trying to protect when she ran into the room. Cass was there, looking shocked and disheveled, but alive and well. And, of course, a vampire was lying on the ground, trembling. This was all Helena got to see or do, because if she was surprised by her abrupt entrance to the room, Cass had been so even more. And when the kid felt someone else burst into the room, her instincts told her to once again raise the talisman she was still tightly clasping in her hand and she directed it at Helena. Helena, who immediately felt all her senses collapse in nothing but paralyzing discomfort that sent her down on her knees groaning in pain.

“Oh shit! Helena! I’m sorry!” Cass exclaimed, when she realized her mistake, putting away the small amulet again.

Luckily, by then the fight had pretty much ended downstairs, and Renee and Dinah arrived at the room

“Oh my God! Helena!” Dinah exclaimed and made a move to reach out to comfort the other woman, but Cass stopped her.

“No, no, leave her be. It has to pass naturally.”

“Cassandra what did you do?” Renee asked her, trying to mask a laugh by using a stern voice, but the kid definitely noticed.

Cass shrugged, “She caught me off guard!” she defended herself. “I never go to sleep without one of these,” she smirked.

“Is she going to be okay?” Dinah wondered.

“Yeah, give her a few minutes, your girlfriend will be okay,” Cass waved her off, “You should do something about that guy though.”

“Yeah,” Renee agreed, ignoring the annoyed look Dinah was giving Cass but feeling genuinely bad for Helena, that was still shivering on the ground, “And about fifteen others downstairs…”

* * *

It wasn’t that difficult to clean up the mess. After all, leaving a heap of possibly dead, badly wounded and, or, knocked out vampires in the middle of the street, well, it wouldn’t be the single strangest thing that happened on Gotham that day. Renee, Dinah, and a pretty content hyena worked on it, while Cass kept an eye on their shocked friend. Luckily for Helena, Cass didn’t use the worse thing on her arsenal, didn’t even touch the stones she’d stolen from the Bertinelli’s previously that night. Plus, since Helena fed well recently and was generally stronger than most of the low-level goons sent to do that attack, she woke up from her daze soon enough.

After Helena, not exactly happily, drank what was left of the blood Harley had brought from the bar, they regrouped.

Harley was on the floor, lazily stretching her limbs. She was wearing deeply mismatched clothes that she had burrowed from Dinah’s car and Helena’s closet. “I can’t believe that little bitch escaped us though,” she complained.

“I did get to interrogate him last night though,” Renee announced, “while the lovebirds were busy flirting.”

Poor Helena could barely frown, still struggling with a bad headache. Dinah spoke on her behalf, “Mind your fucking business, Montoya. What did he say?”

Renee laughed for a moment, then focused. “I’d say nothing groundbreaking, really. He works for Sionis, as does every other low-life asshole in this city. We already knew he might be on your tracks because you’ve coincidentally killed a handful of his men. But… I don’t know, I have a feeling there’s something else here.”

“What do you mean?” Helena wondered.

First, Renee sighed, but when she started talking her excitement was palpable. Unknowingly, she was showing a new side of her that the others weren’t that familiar with. She was a fearlessly brave woman, someone with a strong moral compass and an unmatched passion for justice, plus an innate talent and interest in crime-solving.

“I _know_ there’s something more here. I’ve studied Sionis, this is not his usual style. He’s being direct, reckless, almost careless. Today there was no show, no drama, and if he didn’t show up it was because he wasn’t sure he’d win. He’s _scared_. There’s something about you that worries him. This guy he sent yesterday? He was investigating. He cares about your identity, Helena. About who you are and why you’re doing this. He is scared.”

“Are you sure?” Dinah asked, and after a hesitant pause she added, “Renee, don’t get me wrong, but could these suspicions may be influenced by your personal grudge to Roman?”

“Yeah, why do you even hate him so much Montoya?” Harley wondered, tilting her head with a smile, “Not that it’s difficult to hate him but, you know, you’re really going for his head.”

“Story for another day,” Renee rolled her eyes, “Point is, this is more complicated then we thought of at first. He usually doesn’t care about losing a couple of men, why is he so worried now?”

“I don’t know, he’s not even on my list.”

Helena was barely starting to feel genuinely better after the effects of Cass’ magic, but now she was feeling a different type of headache coming, prompted by confusion and a mystery bigger than she bargained for. Her mumbled words caught Renee’s attention though.

“And may I ask who is?” she asked, and she barely received a look from Helena that said “absolutely not” so she made her best guess, took a leap and said, “Is there a chance that on your list appears the name of _Victor Zsasz_?”

“Yes,” Helena replied. She barely reacted at all, she didn’t jump, scream or break anything. Still, by the way her eyes darkened and filled with pain, her whole body tensed and her fists tightened until her knuckles went white, the whole room felt instantly colder. “I won’t say anything else,” she added, because she didn’t want to say anything else, because she didn’t think she could use words to describe the absolute hatred and disgust she felt for the memory of the bleached hair, crazed eyes and array of scars on the face of a particular man she couldn’t wait to have dead at her feet.

“Alright,” Renee conceded, and went on to explain, “He is Roman’s right-hand man. Maybe Roman has a feeling that whoever is behind these murders could go after him, or after Zsasz next. I need to figure out who he might be suspecting of, what he’s so afraid of, or how to catch him, how to stop him before he does something else.”

At that moment, Renee had been pacing from one end to the other of the spacious kitchen of the mansion. She stopped for a moment to take a look around her. Cass was engrossed in her phone, only looking up occasionally to mumble “cool,” every time Harley threw a knife at the tall ceiling and got it stuck there. Harley, who was laying on top of the counter of the kitchen now, apparently always having a preference for countertops over chairs. She wasn’t alone. Dinah, seated with admittedly more poise, was on top of the counter as well, but not paying nearly half of the attention Renee would normally expect from her. It appeared that Dinah thought it was much more entertaining and productive to stare at Helena’s profile, try to memorize the details, marvel over the little strand of hair that curled by her ear, smile boldly whenever Helena caught her staring and marvel some more when Helena blushed. Which was all Helena did really.

“You’re all useless…” Renee whispered, and she would have been angry by the fact that they all collectively ignored her comment if that hadn’t exactly proved her point. But she did need her attention one last time for the day, so they better suck it up. She clapped her hands, “Okay! Listen up for a minute if you’re all capable to. This is serious. Sionis has many, many people under his power. They know all of us are involved with the Crossbow Killer. We have to take care, we don’t have much time before he does something new. I want all of you _safe_ until I find something new on his case.”

“Aren’t you currently suspended?” Dinah asked.

“Ellen isn’t,” Renee chuckled, already taking out her phone.

Afterward, there wasn’t much more to do other than share their goodbyes. Renee left with a promise of a breakthrough in a day or so, and a reminder to everyone to be safe. Harley left in a good mood, leaving a playful lipstick stain on Helena’s cheek that had her frowning as much as Dinah. Cass said sorry one last time to Helena for throwing an enchantment on her. And, following her newly found habit of lingering behind every time she had to say goodbye to Helena, Dinah walked up to her, a little too closely, and smiled up at her.

“Thanks for having us,” she whispered.

“Ah- any, um, anytime. Yeah, sure.”

Helena stuttered, she stood rigid and used all her willpower to not take a step back or close the distance but revel in the electrifying feeling of being exactly that close to Dinah. Dinah, who had to bite her lip to avoid smiling too much, gesture that brought Helena’s eyes to her mouth, making everything they were trying not to do incredibly difficult not to do.

“See you tonight?”

“Yeah?” Helena mumbled, a question and an agreement at once.

Dinah chuckled, it was so soft and it carried such a handful of emotions that were unfamiliar to Helena that she couldn’t react. She couldn’t do much at that moment, not when Dinah placed a gentle hand on her arm, not when Dinah stood on the tiptoes and kiss her cheek, deliriously close to her lips, not when Dinah started walking away with a smile that Helena knew without question she’d remember for as long as she lived.

“You owe me a date, remember?” Dinah threw over her shoulder as she exited the Bertinelli mansion.

Helena continued to stand still on the spot where Dinah left her. When she finally reacted, she only managed a smile, but it was the most genuine one she’d managed since… since the last time Dinah had made her smile, really. She couldn’t wait to see her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... here's the thing. today i wrote the next chapter of this story, and I was right about to post it when... i realized... i forgot to post This chapter???? im so stupid im really laughing at myself right now. im so sorry!i could have posted this daysss ago! but on the bright side, the next chapter is ready! so now i might add a tiny scene and post it in the next few days :)
> 
> thanks for reading! please leave a comment and let me know what you think :)  
> (also if anyone has watched the old guard and is currently as obsessed as i am... i wrote a thing or two about it)


	11. Why you creepin' 'round here?

That day, for Helena, was pretty busy. Miraculously, she managed to sleep through most of the morning. Mainly thanks to the fact that she was still feeling the effects of the enchanted stone Cass had accidentally used on her. Which turned out to be a good thing, otherwise she doubted she would have gotten much rest at all. This was demonstrated in the afternoon, when all Helena did was freak out over her date with Dinah. How had she ended up in that situation? And was it the best or worst thing that could have happened to her? Because she felt pretty lucky already, and she hadn’t even seen Dinah, but she also felt on the verge of discovering if vampires could die of a heart attack.

In summary, Helena stomped up and down the entire Bertinelli mansion, grumbling to herself, thinking out loud, trying to make a foolproof plan for the evening. She had to figure out what to wear, where to go, what to talk about, and every possible scenario… or at least try to figure it all out. Which, of course, ended up being too much for her. Her frustration eventually drove her out of her house earlier than necessary and to the only place she willingly frequented in Gotham, Harley’s place.

She had expected to get a drink to soothe her nerves and maybe some advice that she would pretend she didn’t want. However, she may have completely forgotten the high probability of Dinah being already there. Considering the woman worked there some days, including that one.

Helena walked through the door and stopped in her tracks, frozen in place as she stared at Dinah on the other side of the counter.

“Wow you really _are_ a vampire,” Dinah smirked.

Helena tilted her head in confusion, which prompted Dinah to wave a hand in Helena’s direction. Helena and her all-black outfit, snuggled into her leather jacket and with dark sunglasses on her face. When it clicked in her mind what Dinah meant, Helena fumbled to take off her glasses and stuttered out, “It was, uh, still sunny outside. That’s just, it’s too bright, it bothers me.”

“Of course,” Dinah smiled.

Helena was still pretty much standing in the middle of the establishment, just staring at Dinah’s smile, unknowingly returning it, until Cass interrupted them. The kid started making gagging noises.

“You guys are ridiculous,” Cass groaned. She was sitting in one of the stools at the bar, enjoying a milkshake that Helena would’ve worried about its contents if it wasn’t for Dinah being on the other side of the bar. “And you’re like, an hour early, Helena.”

“I’m not!” Helena replied, sitting down on a stool beside her.

“You are!”

“Do you want a drink?” Dinah tried to intervene.

That’s when Harley showed up, “Canary!” she exclaimed, “What are you doing _still_ working when your date is sitting right there looking like a snack?!”

Helena frowned at the term and turned to Cass for assistance, but the younger one just waved her off.

“My shift hasn’t ended,” Dinah replied.

“I _told_ you, you could leave early,” Harley insisted, “We will all benefit if Bertinelli’s mood improves by getting laid.”

“Come on!” Cass groaned again, “one more gross comment from anyone and I’ll have to throw up my milkshake!”

“Harley…” Dinah closed her eyes in annoyance, then added, “I _was_ getting ready to leave, but _someone_ showed up even earlier than expected.”

While Helena stayed quiet and blushed, Harley jumped to the other side of the counter and ushered Dinah away to the back of the place, “Go, go, get ready! I’ll keep an eye on your date, and try to keep my hands to myself.”

“Harley!” Dinah scolded her from the doorway, “Please behave.”

But Harley had already turned her back on her, “Take your time, meanwhile, I’ll give Helena _the talk_.”

“Should I just leave?! Seriously,” Cass continued to complain, and decided to pull out her phone to concentrate on it.

Harley sauntered over to stand in front of Helena, leaned her arms on the counter, and as seriously as she could she said, “What are your intention with my drop-dead gorgeous friend, and sexy bartender Miss Lance, huh?”

Helena thought about it for a moment, but eventually responded, “Do you think I have _any_ idea of what I’m doing?”

Harley laughed, and Cass joined in. “No, no, I guess not,” Harley said as she worked on preparing a glass for Helena, “You only get one drink, okay? You shouldn’t be drunk on your first date. Plus, if you’re _lucky_ -”

“ _Harley_ ,” Helena interrupted her, just as they heard the sound of Cass’ forehead meeting the top of the counter in dramatic fashion.

Harley rolled her eyes, then said, “Okay… there you go,” placing a glass filled with blood in front of Helena. Harley observed as Helena instantly picked up the glass and took a sip, no major reaction coming from her. She considered for a moment not saying anything, then she, of course, said something. “Not so disgusting anymore?”

It wasn’t easy for Harley to pull off a tone that wasn’t playful and teasing, but Helena caught a hint of something careful and sincere in the question, so she shrugged and took another sip. Then, because Harley’s smile was as kind as Helena had seen her, she added, “Yeah, I guess I’m… trying to... tolerate myself, I think?”

“Good! We’re making progress, see?” Harley nodded, “Next time, aim for ‘ _accepting_.’ It takes time but, don’t we have loads of that?”

Helena nodded as well, turning the words in her mind, they gave her hope. From the corner of her eye, she saw Cass staring at her.

“You don’t like being a vampire?” the kid eventually asked.

Helena sourly chuckled as she stared at her glass, “Let’s say it was the last thing I wanted to be.” She took a sip of her drink and looked curiously at Cass, “You are a hunter as well. Wouldn’t you find it fucked up to wake up one day as these creatures you are meant to destroy?”

Cass stared at Helena for a moment, considered teasing her for what she considered to be unnecessary dramatism, but then simply shrugged, “Ehh, there are worst things to be. Plus, I’d still be me either way.” The small grin that Cass sent Helena’s way was the cherry on top of another important revelation for the vampire, even if the kid didn’t suspect it. “I mean, it’s not like I _want_ to be a vamp, you know? It works for some people though. It totally fits your aesthetic,” Cass laughed, and then more seriously started to say, “but take Dinah’s case, for example-”

“Cass!” Harley interrupted her suddenly with a tense smile, “are you going to finish your milkshake or should I charge you double?”

“You charge me nothing, asshole!”

“That’s it! You’ll pay triple. For your language, you little shit.”

While those two argued, Helena’s curiosity spiked. What was Dinah’s case? Why had Harley interrupted Cass? But most importantly, why did Dinah chose the exact moment that Helena was finishing her drink to walk in again?

As soon as Helena’s eyes found Dinah, all dressed up and looking, in Harley’s words, drop-dead gorgeous for their date, Helena started coughing violently. She dropped her glass on top of the bar with a little more force than necessary while all the others watched in amusement and a little concern. 

“Are you okay?” was the first thing Dinah said to her.

“Yeah,” Helena nodded purposely. One glance at Harley’s mischievous grin told her she should leave as soon as possible to avoid further embarrassment. “Shall we leave now?” Helena eagerly asked Dinah, already blushing.

“Sure,” Dinah grinned.

“Have fun lovebirds! Don’t you _dare_ return before sunrise!” Harley called after them, making them hurry up on their way to the door, “Enjoy a taste of a hundred years old-”

The door of the place slammed behind Helena and Dinah just in time. They were laughing together now. “Poor Cass,” Dinah said between laughs, “Shit, that kid is going to be traumatized from hanging out with Harley so much.”

“Me too,” Helena said very seriously as she met Dinah’s eyes. And she was more than delighted to see Dinah throw her head back laughing. Helena grinned proudly, but she had to look down at the ground, she couldn’t afford to stare at Dinah’s neck and feel things she believed she had no right to feel.

“So, where are we going?” Dinah asked, “Should I drive or did you bring your bike?” She hoped the slight tremble in her voice at the end of her question didn’t reveal how she was kind of hoping for another opportunity to get on Helena’s bike, sitting impossibly close together, feeling the adrenaline of the moment.

“Actually,” Helena broke her from her train of thoughts, “The place is pretty close by, I thought we could just walk there.”

Dinah liked the idea, but she couldn’t help but be skeptical, considering Helena’s whole look of distaste at what was left of the sunset. “Are you sure?” she chuckled.

Helena was still wearing that look of trying to sink into her leather jacket, and her sunglasses on her face, but at hearing the concern in Dinah’s voice she turned toward her with a sincere smile that lit up her face. “Yes,” she said, “I don’t mind. I just really want to enjoy tonight with you.”

Dinah bit her lip and continued walking, following Helena’s lead. But she couldn’t help saying, “I haven’t got a chance at saying you look _really_ good tonight.”

Helena tried her best at remaining calm. Her hands that were in the pockets of her jacket tightened into fists in a vague attempt at controlling her racing heart. “And you look more beautiful than ever,” she responded. “But you always look beautiful,” she mumbled afterward.

Genuinely touched by Helena’s words, Dinah couldn’t avoid feeling amused at the fact that Helana just called her beautiful while staring at the ground ahead of her. Dinah was aware at this point that more often than not when she tried to tease or push Hellena’s limits her plans backfired. Still, “Helena, look at me,” Dinah asked. Helena not only lifted her head, but took off her sunglasses. Finally, Dinah was granted the pleasure of staring into Helena’s nervous and deeply beautiful eyes, she could thank her properly. “Thank you.”

The words made Helena’s lips softly turn upwards. It looked like some tension had finally eased from her shoulders, some of it at least. Still, one of her hands escaped from the safety of her jacket’s pockets and she rubbed the back of her neck and exhaled a little trembling sigh.

“Are you nervous?” Dinah proceeded to ask.

“Of course,” Helena chuckled. She had figured out her best bet with Dinah was honesty. “Why did you-” she blurted out and then stopped herself, “Can I ask why, uh, why did you ask to go out with me?”

Dinah sighed. She hadn’t really expected Helena to ask that, a question she genuinely didn’t know the answer to. “Because I _wanted_ to,” Dinah replied, simply, because it was the truth. “I figured that once I was here I’d understand why I want it so badly.”

Helena’s hand returned to her jacket’s pocket and she tightened her fists so tightly she would’ve thought she might hurt herself, but all her thoughts were occupied by Dinah, Dinah’s words, the meaning behind Dinah’s words. Helena gulped, felt herself blush, her entire body react to Dinah in a way it had never done with anybody else, and they were just talking. She had survived a hundred years and plenty of deadly experiences, so she decided at that moment that if Dinah was going to be the cause of her unlikely dead, then so be it.

“Why you want…” Helena started to ask, her voice was barely above a whisper, but she managed to say, “want… _me_?”

Dinah was biting her bottom lip again. She felt goosebumps on her skin because of the way Helena looked at her. She turned to meet Helena’s eyes and playfully answered, “Maybe…” Then started walking a little bit faster, thoroughly enjoying the sight of Helena speeding up to catch up with her. They were both wearing smiles on their faces and their eyes were sparkling. “Are you telling me where we’re going?” Dinah asked her, opting for changing the subject.

“No,” Helena easily responded, “it’s a secret place.”

“Is it?” Dinah hummed with curiosity.

At last, there was a pause in their conversation as they neared their destination. Helena couldn’t believe it but she was feeling immensely more relaxed than she thought would have been possible with Dinah by her side. Ever since Dinah had playfully said she owed her a drink, Helena had been eagerly looking forward and simultaneously dreading the moment. She had spent the entire day planning ways to make sure Dinah would enjoy her night, her time spent with her, and hopefully not regret it. But Helena suddenly realized, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard, maybe they could both genuinely and naturally enjoy their night, maybe this didn’t have to be so difficult after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!  
> please leave a comment telling me what you think?  
> i'm excited about their date. any requests that you'd like to see on their special night?


	12. It always starts as something so simple and innocent but

One moment Dinah was smiling as Helena opened the door for her to a little and discreet Italian restaurant, and a second later they were swept away by a wave of people flocking towards Helena full of, “Helena! Please come in!”, and “Look at how much you’ve grown!” and “You have to visit more often, I almost forgot how tall you are!” and of course, “And who’s this beautiful lady you have with you?”

Helena dealt with them timidly but surprisingly graceful and with familiarity. Only after they were finally led to a cozy and secluded table by the back, Helena flopped down on her chair with a heavy sigh and explained, “Family,” she waved around them. There was a spark of pain in her eyes when she said that word, but it disappeared just as quickly. “It took me about a week in Gotham to realize that _of course_ they didn’t let me come here by myself.”

“They opened a whole ass restaurant just to keep an eye on you?” Dinah smiled, “That’s sweet.”

She saw Helena bite her lip and fidget a little bit on her chair. Helena wasn’t comfortable talking about this, not exactly, but she had figured out that opening up to Dinah made her feel better rather than worse. “I… Some of these men, they were involved in the death of my family. But they also saved my life, they raised me, took care of me for a hundred years, and helped me with my mission, and to become the person I am today.” She spoke slowly, trying to keep her emotions in check.

“I like the person you are today,” Dinah smiled kindly, “I should be thankful to them in some way then.”

Helena nodded, but she still wasn’t smiling. “I hated them for a longer time than I’ve loved them but… a hundred years is a long time. It was _enough_ time”

“You love them now?” Dinah couldn’t help but ask. Her heart felt surprisingly warm at the thought that after so much tragedy and loss, Helena, after all, had actually found some comfort, peace, forgiveness, and a safe place around people that genuinely cared for her. Plus, forgiveness was something that Dinah herself could learn a thing or two of.

Helena frowned. She was staring at a couple of waiters that were playfully bantering with each other. At last, she rolled her eyes, “A little, I guess.”

“Look at you!” Dinah playfully cooed, “Having feelings!”

“Hey! I have feelings!”

“Prove it,” Dinah smoothly answered and earned herself a baffled expression from Helena. The pale woman blushed furiously, basically complying with Dinah’s request even unknowingly. But just then the waiter arrived to take their order, playfully tease Helena, and introduce himself to Dinah.

Most of the dinner went on seamlessly. Mostly they tried to avoid delicate subjects, but it wasn’t completely easy since Dinah’s favorite childhood memories included her mom that she lost too soon, and Helena’s hilarious anecdotes about adapting to new inventions as they were just happening through the twentieth century were tinged with her experiences of biting innocent people in order to survive. Still, they managed to laugh through most of it. Dinah had a particularly great time teasing Helena, making blush at every chance she had, but it was a date, so she saw no use in holding back. Helena herself wasn’t too far behind. She wasn’t exactly good at flirting, but her bluntness and honesty did the trick, especially when she randomly called Dinah beautiful, complimented her laugh, her eyes, and her voice several times through their date.

There was one thing that Helena had been dying to ask the entire time, but she was sensible enough to wait until they had finished their meal and were just waiting for the dessert.

“Dinah, can I ask you something?” Helena waited until she received an encouraging nod, and then said, “What, uh- Did you, um, did you always hated vampires?”

Dinah was quiet for a moment, drawing mindless patterns on the table with a finger, but finally, she raised her head and smiled at Helena, “What did Harley tell you?”

Helena shook her head embarrassedly, “Actually it was Cass. Well, she didn’t even say anything, but I feel like there’s just, there’s _something_. Something I’d like to know, if you’d let me.”

“You know, I was getting comfortable with my life,” Dinah sighed, knowing she wasn’t getting out of this, and not really wanting to try to. “I was… I have a couple of jobs I enjoy, and a couple of great friends too. I didn’t plan on befriending Renee or Harley, but I did. I think, in some fucked up way, maybe I sought them out? I don’t know, but I trust them, vampires or not. And I thought, someday I _might_ stop blaming all of you for the loss of my mother. Then _you_ showed up.” Dinah even chuckled lightly at the confused expression in the other woman’s face.

“You understood my grief. You were, you _are_ honestly as fucked up as the rest of us, huh? But you were also… a little weird, if I’m honest,” she chuckled along, and went on with a smile, “You are sweet, and kind, and damn funny, even when you don’t want to, or don’t notice it. You are using your power to do something that I respect, and your journey is admirable. It doesn’t hurt that you are goddamned gorgeous, Helena.” Dinah sighed and leaned back on her chair, she stared deeply into the beautiful, deep and dark eyes of the woman she liked more than expected and said, “You showed up, and you reminded of things I used to want more than anything, things I had sworn to forget, but I didn’t.”

“What was it?” Helena asked.

Dinah bit her lip, “I wanted to be a vampire, Helena.”

“ _What?!_ ”

“For as long as I can remember, I did,” Dinah nodded, and smiled sadly. “Ever since I was a kid, it was my biggest dream.” Her eyes were shining with the remnants of childhood wonder that never really leave. “My mom, she had to keep an eye on me so that I wouldn’t get in trouble with vampires. And I’m sure she’d thought that I would forget about it when I grew up. But I didn’t,” Dinah shrugged. She made a pause to look at Helena, who was completely taken over by the story.

“When I met Harley, we became friends, and I… I asked her to turn me. Many times. I thought I was ready, I wanted to be a vampire, and if Harley would just bite me I would already be more powerful than all other new kids around. To her credit, Harley hesitated most times, enough to put it off for a while at least. Renee would stop me too, countless times. Then, my mom… well, that changed everything. Vampires killed her, and just the thought that I had wanted to be like that… I felt disgusted with myself. And now… I just don’t know what I want. Who knows if I will ever know.”

By the time Dinah was done talking, their desserts had come and gone and they were good to go. Helena felt like her brain had just undergone some sort of mild short circuit, and she was only capable of giving Dinah a sheepish smile and saying, “For what it’s worth, I think you would make a beautiful, and deadly vampire.”

Dinah looked down and chuckled, hoping she wasn’t blushing. When she looked up, there was no hiding the powerful feelings making her eyes sparkle, it was all for Helena. “You dork,” she teased her affectionately, and Helena smiled proudly at that, “are we ready to go?”

The two of them walked out of the restaurant hand in hand. They had agreed for Helena to walk Dinah back to her apartment, and then Helena was meant to go find her bike and go back to her own house. It was late at night, but Dinah had never felt so alive. Her work, and the fact that she continued to hang out with vampires had already fucked up her sleeping schedule beyond relief, but this was something entirely different. Helena too, could feel that something good, something great had been born in one of the dozens of smiles they exchanged that night. She felt stronger than ever, more certain, and _excited_ about being alive than she could ever remember feeling. That buzzing strength in her came in handy then, especially when they were ambushed.

They had been walking mostly in silence, only sharing meaningful looks and smiles every now and then. But then, already near Dinah’s apartment, Helena’s hold on Dinah’s hand tightened, and she frowned. She felt them coming. Abruptly, she tugged Dinah into a random alleyway and stood defensively in front of her just as the attackers showed up. 

“Fuck!” Dinah exclaimed, watching wide-eyed as Helena did her best to fight simultaneously two vampires that apparently had been chasing them. Dinah took a step back, but then a pair of arms wrapped around her shoulders and tried to drag her away. “ _Shit!_ ” she cursed. That got Helena’s attention, unfortunately, for the others took advantage of her distraction to land a particularly nasty punch to her abdomen. Helena didn’t seem to care though, she took the hits delivered at her until she noticed that Dinah had a trick under her sleeve. 

Dinah struggled against the hold of her attacker, but it was useless. He was a creature of supernatural strength, and she was just human. But one of them always carried a silver dagger with her, and she used to cut through the arm of the vampire. Wounded, he got slower, weaker, and Dinah, still human, was an extraordinary fighter, who went at him with fury, throwing kicks, punches, and swinging her dagger, stabbing him twice until he had to crawl away from her.

As she watched him escape, Dinah stood still. She was breathing heavily, and the adrenaline inside her was like a drug. She could practically hear her heart beating. That’s when she realized that everything around her was too quiet. She turned around harshly, worried about Helena. What she found was two men lying unconscious, possibly dead, at the feet of the last of the Bertinelli’s. Helena had a very interesting expression on her face. She was breathless, panting, her mouth agape and her eyes sparkling in an entirely new manner. Finally, Dinah watched Helena take a deep breath, bite her lip, and resolutely walk toward her.

Helena placed a confident hand on Dinah’s waist and pulled her forward, their bodies flushed together. The contrast of the demanding and burning hot touch, with Helena’s other hand, that made its way to Dinah’s cheek, where her touch was light as a feather, it was enough to make Dinah feel dizzy, but not enough to distract her from what she wanted. In the end, after placing one hand on Helena’s arm and the other wrapped behind the woman’s head to pull at her hair, it was Dinah who finally closed the distance.

Her lips met Helena’s in a storm of emotions. Because they both had waited for this moment for longer than they realized, they felt careful and conscious of its precious quality. But they too felt a hunger for each other in a magnitude they were unfamiliar with. The leftover adrenaline of the fight took their emotions higher and higher, making the attack on each other’s lips more aggressive. But the delight of safely holding each other, the longing to give in to their desires, to lower their defenses and give in to each other more than anything, that slowed them down, that dimmed the world around them.

Dinah pulled away only because she had a very important request to make, “Come home with me,” she nearly gasped against Helena’s lips. Helena nodded eagerly, quickly, then dove back in for more of Dinah’s lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!
> 
> i hope you guys liked this chapter, it was an important one! wish me luck with the next chapter, I don't know how much i'll write or how i'll write or what even will i write lol
> 
> please leave a comment if you liked it? :)
> 
> you can find me on tumblr @afterlaughy


	13. Too much of anything, you'll never know how to quit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay... i tried my best! i hope it's good

“Do you _ever_ relax?” Dinah asked Helena as soon as they were safely inside her apartment. She was hoping that teasing Helena might disguise the slight tremble in her voice caused by anticipation.

Helena was awkwardly standing in the middle of Dinah’s living room, her entire posture appeared tense. She had taken a look around, and marveled at what she managed to see, at the feeling of being welcomed inside Dinah’s space at all. But her eyes couldn’t drift away from Dinah for too long.

Helena smiled somewhat sheepishly and shrugged, “How could I?” was all she said as an answer to the previous question, including a nod toward Dinah, the most magnificent woman Helena had ever met. She couldn’t even fathom the concept of relaxing whenever Dinah was involved. Dinah found it flattering, but possibly an inconvenience for the things she had in mind for that night.

“Come here,” Dinah whispered, and extended her arm. When Helena intertwined their fingers, Dinah gently pulled her toward the sofa, where they sat side by side, but immediately turned to face each other. It wasn’t that she wasn’t nervous and eager herself, but the evident tension accumulated in the vampire’s shoulders looked downright painful. In a gesture that she hoped was soothing, Dinah placed both hands on Helena’s shoulders, massaged softly, and smiled kindly when she met Helena’s eyes. But then her eyes looked down at Helena’s lips, and her self control took a dive. Dinah started to lean in, at a painfully slow pace, but clearly determined. “Relax,” she whispered at last right before her lips met Helena’s.

This kiss, although considerably slower than their first, was, if possible, even more powerful. The adrenaline of the fight was long gone, but their feelings for each other made up for it in full force. There was Dinah leaning into Helena, her lips and tongue searching for all kinds of unnamed things, and her hand moving up to cup Helena’s jaw and keep her in place. Then there was Helena, full of exhilarating contradictions, melting under Dinah’s touch, and simultaneously stiff with unwanted restrictions that the voice in the back of her head kept reminding her of. Her lips were following Dinah’s lead, eager to let her take everything she wanted, but her hands betrayed her impulse to give in, and instead showed her desire to take and take as much of Dinah as the woman could give her. One of Helena’s hands had found a place in Dinah’s thigh gripping tightly to hold herself up, her thumb occasionally brushing the inside of her thigh over her pants and sending shivers all through Dinah’s body. Then Helena’s other hand was restless, It started by grasping Dinah’s waist, pulling her forward, it moved up her back, her palm open, and finally she grabbed a fist of Dinah’s blazer, debated on pulling her even closer, but what she really wanted was to rip the fabric off of her.

When Dinah too started pushing away the fabric of Helena’s leather jacket, it was clear they wanted the same thing. They were forced to pull apart for seconds, just to get the jacket off, and Dinah’s blazer had to leave as well. However, that left a little too much of Dinah’s neck uncovered. For an instant, it was like Helena’s vision had clouded with nothing but an irresistible want. She closed her eyes tightly and willed her body to slow down and listen. With a firm hand on Dinah’s shoulder, she also stopped her from jumping right back into the kisses that made it all the more difficult for Helena to form coherent thoughts.

“Dinah,” Helena called her name breathlessly, opened her eyes, and looked pleadingly at her. “I _have_ to ask,” she said. Dinah sobered up slightly and listened, giving Helena time to gather her thoughts. “Are you _sure_?” was Helena’s first question, and immediately she received a smile and a confident nod. She sighed, starting to feel relieved, but there was more. “You are not _scared_ of me?”

The question surprised Dinah. She would have thought it was obvious by now, but if Helena needed reassurance, Dinah would give her anything she wanted. She thought about it for a second, needing the other woman to know that she took this seriously. Dinah thought that, although she had seen Helena in the full glory and gore of the vampiric condition, had seen her fight men twice her size and twice her impossible age, and take them down two at a time, she wasn’t scared of her. Right since the moment they met, Helena, with her, had been nothing if not careful, respectful, and then gentle, and sweet, and that’s without mentioning shy and flustered. “No, I am not afraid of you, Helena” Dinah whispered, delighted to see Helena’s tension dim.

Helena opened her mouth to ask one last question, but her brow furrowed and it was clear this was the most difficult one. “Are you not… _disgusted_ by me?” she asked finally, pain dripping from the words.

This time, Dinah was even more shocked. Helena’s choice of words ringed in her mind, because during their date she had admitted to once being disgusted by herself, and she knew Helena had felt the exact thing on her own for so much longer than Dinah could even imagine. Dinah planned on answering, but she knew that words wouldn’t be enough to completely vanish that absurd thought from the other woman’s mind. She had to show her that they could be something beautiful, exhilarating, that they could create something wonderful and fascinating.

“How could I?” Dinah replied, at last, throwing Helena’s words back to her and enjoying the way it seemed to click for Helena. But that wasn’t all. Swiftly, Dinah put her hands on Helena’s shoulders and moved to straddle her legs. She didn’t miss the breathy sigh that escaped Helena’s lips. Dinah held Helena’s face with both hands, met her eyes boldly, confidently, and with as much intent as she was capable of, she said, “How could I, Helena, when I want you so badly?”

Finally, Helena gave a resolute nod, and quickly went back for Dinah’s lips, taking her by surprise with her certainty. She had her questions and she had received the answers she wanted and needed. Now? Now there was no time to waste. When Helena held tightly to Dinah’s thighs and effortlessly stood up, carrying her, Dinah’s yelp of surprise was swallowed by Helena’s kisses. The pleasant surprises continued to arrive one after another. Especially after Helena lovingly let Dinah fall down on the mattress, just to follow right after her, making quick work of taking off her blouse, quickly followed by pants and underwear. When Dinah was left wearing nothing but her bra, and Helena was delighting herself on her place between her legs, Dinah faced the fact that Helena wasn’t nearly as inexperienced as she would have innocently believed due to the woman’s usual nervous manner. A century worth of women throwing themselves at Helena, well, that paid off. And Dinah was enjoying the results, again and again.

But Dinah wasn’t one to go down without a fight. Or, to make use of a better metaphor, she could say that when dancing, she liked to be the one leading. Effectively, she managed to drag Helena out of that delicious spot she had claimed and lead her to the top of the bed. There, Helena laid on her back in perfectly still anticipation, looking up as Dinah, at a painfully and teasing slow pace, took the rings off her fingers, one by one. Once she was done, Dinah leaned over Helena to leave the rings on her bedside table and then just didn’t manage to go all the way back to where she was. Her lips explored Helena’s neck and chest thoroughly, while her hand worked restlessly between Helena’s legs, proving that she could perfectly match Helena’s skill and dedication, as many times as possible.

Dinah started focusing on Helena’s face, the sweet expression of pleasure that took over. But then, a particular detail caught Dinah’s attention. Helena was biting her bottom lip, _hard_. It took a moment for Dinah to realize, but there was more than just pleasure there. Helena was holding herself back. The minute the vampire reached a new high and it was impossible to hold back, her lips parted and a strangled moan escaped her. The sound was deliciously sinful, but Dinah was more focused on the sight in front of her. With her mouth open, Helena’s fangs were in full display. It looked like their activities had aggressively pulled to the surface the deepest sides of Helena.

Dinah was transfixed by the sight long enough for Helena to recover and get the upper hand once again. The vampire sat up more comfortably in the bed and pulled Dinah to her lap, where, once again, her hand started expertly exploring the most intimate parts of Dinah’s body. The sensations made Dinah throw back her head in pleasure and let a moan escape her lips. She might have stumbled off Helena but the woman had her other arms firmly holding her waist, keeping her in place.

For a few minutes, Dinah let herself enjoy it, really enjoy it. Her body was once again starting to threaten to reach a new high, but her mind still managed to reach a hold on clarity. Dinah looked down at Helena, who, much to Dinah’s pleasure and difficulty to keep her mind working, was now passionately focused on worshipping Dinah’s chest with her lips, and her tongue and teeth were ardent collaborators. However, Dinah couldn’t help but notice Helena’s intense focus there might be a distraction too. Since she sat on Helena’s lap, the other woman hadn’t looked back up at her. Then, the final piece of the puzzle. Throughout the entire night, Helena hadn’t even touched Dinah’s neck. She had barely glanced at it before forcing her eyes to look away. Dinah understood suddenly what exactly was going on. A storm of feelings attacked her. She felt bad for Helena for feeling she had to hold back. She felt immense affection for the fact that Helena was being so good to her, for her. She also realized that, Helena holding back, that was the last thing she wanted.

“Helena,” Dinah called out, her voice rough with arousal, “Helena, baby, look at me,” she requested, pulling at Helena’s hair.

Finally, Helena’s lips left Dinah’s chest and she looked up at those majestic pairs of eyes that were calling to her. The looks on each other's faces were indescribable, they reflected their adoration and desire right back at each other, and pulled a smile on their lips. Dinah leaned down to kiss Helena, and surprised her with the sweetness of it, slowing down the intensity they had created.

Dinah pulled away slowly, and very carefully she said, “Helena… I want you to bite me.”

Helena’s movements stilled, her hands were shaking slightly when she moved them to rest on Dinah’s thighs. Her eyes showed her shock, and a strangled whine was caught in the back of her throat. She lowered her head and closed her eyes tightly. “I _can’t_ , Dinah, I couldn’t do that to you.”

The distress in Helena’s voice was obvious. Dinah wrapped her arms around Helena’s naked back and said, “Helena, I’m not asking you to turn me. You know what I want.” She held Helena against her chest tightly, lovingly. She was surprised by the speed in which their passion could transition into soft intimacy. She couldn’t say she disliked it at all. “I know what I’m asking Helena,” Dinah whispered with her lips against Helena’s messy hair. It was true. She had heard so many stories about what it meant for a vampire to bite in a moment like this. What it would feel like for each of them. “It would have been impossible to live in Gotham without hearing all about it. I want it, Helena, I want _you_. Don’t you want to?”

In response, Helena tightened her arms around Dinah even more. She kept her head pressed against Dinah’s chest, listening to her heartbeat, both of them breathing heavily. “I want it… I want it so deeply I feel like it might kill me,” she mumbled with her lips brushing Dinah’s skin, making goosebumps rise all over. 

Dinah ran her fingers through Helena’s hair in a soothing motion for a few moments. But then she pulled lightly, to get Helena to look at her again. “Do it,” was all she said when her eyes met Helena’s.

Helena’s lips parted, there were so many things she wanted to say, so much on the tip of her tongue. It was something along the lines of how desperately she wanted to, how long she had wished and yearned for someone to want her like this, how it was the very first time in a hundred years that someone asked for her, that someone wanted, that this hunger was reciprocated, that this was everything she ever wanted. She couldn’t get the words out. She moved up and claimed Dinah’s lips in a new burning kiss that she hoped would send the message across.

Instantly, both their hands started moving again, searching, playing, caressing, and scratching. It wasn’t long before Helena’s lips left Dinah’s and started adventuring to new places that she desired more than anything. Her kisses traveled through Dinah’s jaw and finally, fucking _finally_ they both thought, they found her neck. Once there, they both delighted in the feelings for long delicious moments. But soon, it was impossible to ignore the sensation of Helena’s fangs scratching the tender skin every now and then. Both their bodies were on fire, already experiencing everything more intensely than ever before.

“Dinah,” Helena sighed, whispering the name with all the devotion in the world. Then she did it, she bit Dinah’s neck. It sent both of them to incredible heights where they had never been before. It was a connection and pleasure of a magnitude that went beyond their wildest dreams. It was _everything_ , and then even more than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did you like it?? please validate me. this chapter was an interesting but tough one to write lol
> 
> thank you so much everyone for reading!! comments are very appreciated


	14. You had a taste but you don't want to forget it

“Are you falling asleep?” Dinah chuckled.

“No,” Helena lied very seriously, and proceeded to nuzzle her head even closer, if possible, to Dinah’s neck. Her lips brushing the tender skin that she had not so tenderly worshipped through most of the night until the sun caught them like this. Dinah was holding her in her arm, and Helena held her tightly with an arm wrapped around her waist, and she didn’t think life could get any better than this.

Dinah looked at her adoringly and smiled. It was like after the initial approval and, honestly, encouragement to pay attention to her neck, Helena never really moved far from it. So, Dinah let her fingers continue to trace mindless shapes on Helena’s naked back, and allowed herself to enjoy the silence around them. Dinah was troubled, though. She was dealing with an intense internal debate between finally succumbing to sleep with her blissful company, or using that unusual energy that Helena’s bites gave her to restart their passion once again. It was good to have that kind of trouble.

“Are you okay?” Helena’s question broke the silence and brought Dinah’s thoughts to a screeching halt.

The unexpected question took a minute to register in Dinah’s mind, and another moment for her to understand. The feeling of Helena’s cold fingertips tracing the little scars on her neck finally made her understand.

“Yes,” Dinah replied as quickly as possible. Helena had begrudgingly left her place snuggled to her neck and held herself up with an elbow to look down at Dinah, who met her eyes confidently. “I feel perfectly fine, Helena,” Dinah added, “I feel even _better_ than that.”

“Good,” Helena gifted her with a tiny smile right before connecting their lips again. It was a soft kiss, but it had all the potential to lead them to really interesting places. However, after a few more kisses, Helena pulled away. She still had her eyes closed, but she was suddenly frowning. “Ugh, Harley,” Helena grumbled.

“Excuse me?” Dinah asked, utterly confused.

Right on time, Harley poked her head in from the window, “Hey! Lovebirds!” she exclaimed, way too loudly for that time in the morning. “I just wanted to say I’m _so_ happy you guys got laid! I even brought a congratulatory gift!” She laughed. In her arms, she was holding bags and an odd array of things including some sort of dissected beaver that she hoisted up to show them. “Just kidding,” she added waving them off as if she had given them time to react to her unstoppable flow of words, “He’s mine and you’re not allowed to touch.” She pointed an accusatory finger at them, very seriously.

“Harley, seriously,” Dinah finally interrupted her with a groan, “What the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

“Yeah,” Helena agreed, still frowning but now more confused than angry, “There’s… sun outside. Too bright.”

Harley chuckled and moved to sit more comfortably on Dinah’s window sill. “Yeah, about that… Here’s the thing, lovebirds, we are in deep shit,” Harley smiled one of her unsettlingly big smiles, but her friends could pick up on genuine traces of worry in her eyes. She took a deep breath before continuing. “Cass is gone. Yeah, she… she disappeared. She was kidnapped. And _someone_ told her family it was _me_. Think something along the lines of every vampire hunter in Gotham going after my ass. Plus, Sionis must have given a signal and all his goons are also going after me… _and_ both of you.” Harley made a pause if only to enjoy the sight of Dinah and Helena going pale, and impossibly paler, respectively, at her words. “So… we gotta move! Renee said to bring our sexy butts to the Bertinelli’s mansion immediately. If they’re gonna get us might as well be on our territory, right? Are you guys ready?”

Harley’s expectant smile was met with silence. Dinah and Helena exchanged deeply concerned looks. They didn’t even have time to mourn the violent loss of what had been a perfect morning.

“Yeah… let’s go,” Dinah sighed. She placed one last kiss on Helena’s worried frown before moving away to get ready as quickly as possible. As much as they wished that wasn’t the case, there was no way they could escape from dealing with this huge mess.

* * *

Helena had led Dinah and Harley through an alternative road to the old house for their safety, but once they were close enough to realize that Sionis’ goons had arrived first, all bets were off. Renee was in trouble.

Harley arrived there first, just in time to see Renee break free from the hold of a man twice, maybe three times according to Harley, the woman’s size. They were surrounded by a small group of men and that one looked frustrated enough for Harley to guess that Renee had put up quite a decent fight. Before he could make a new attempt at reaching for Renee, a very angry hyena jumped on him. Since the men were startled Renee could focus her fight on a new one of them and take him by surprise.

Meanwhile, Helena had taken a quick detour. The silver, holy water dipped arrows from her crossbow reached the other men before she did. It wasn’t enough to kill most of them, and there were others, so she jumped right in to fight alongside Renee and their favorite hyena. When Dinah finally arrived, she proved once again to be perfectly able to rise up to the occasion. This time she smartly used the arrows stuck on the men to further hurt them, twisting the weapon, stretching the wounds, stabbing them with them, taking them down with a powerful kick, and moving on with the others. 

This time, it looked like the men were certainly better prepared to face the fight. Though that didn’t mean their odds had improved. Apparently, Roman’s persistent mistake was not only to underestimate the group of women, but to assume they wouldn’t continue to work together. He had assumed that after their last scare, after feeling threatened, they would flee the scene, disband, split up, stay away from each other. He knew he didn’t stand a chance against Harley, so he had sent the hunters for her. The human didn’t concern him, another mistake. And he had sent a good enough group of men to Renee and Helena’s homes. A group that might have succeeded if the women had been alone. But once more they stood up for each other, and spectacularly kicked the ass of every man that dared put a foot on the Bertinelli’s grounds.

When they were done, Harley and Helena were still pretty much in perfect condition, save for the blood that had fallen on them. Dinah had taken a few hits this time, but she was doing her best to downplay it, and she stood tall and proud at the end of the fight. Renee, however, had been outnumbered, taken by surprise, and fought those men for a while before her friends showed up. She was kneeling on the ground when it all was finally over, and she was struggling to get up.

“Renee, are you alright?” Dinah approached her.

“I’m fine,” Renee waved her off.

Helena also walked closer, “Are you… sure?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” she insisted with a groan, even though it looked like she gave up trying to stand up and just sat down on there on the floor, breathing heavily and slowly recovering.

“Super sure you’re okay?” Harley asked too.

“Yes! Fuck, I said I’m _fine_ ,” Renee nearly yelled. She frowned at the floor of the mansion as if it had personally wronged her, and then added, a little painfully, “Thanks…”

But it still looked like she had no intention to get up from there. So, the other three women exchanged looks, shrugged, and let themselves fall down to sit nearby.

“Uh, Harley…” Dinah called her when she noticed that once again Helena had her face turned away and her cheeks were aggressively red. “Clothes?”

“ _Oh!_ Right!” Harley exclaimed. She nodded, thought about it for a moment, and said, “Sure, I’ll go get them.” She stood up, completely naked as she was and walked away. “I must have dropped my bags somewhere. Start without me!”

“Start what?” Helena asked.

Harley wasn’t too far away that she couldn’t yell her answer, “The orgy, of course!”

“ _What?!_ ”

Helena’s horrified exclamation and the fact that she almost jumped to the ceiling like a frightened cat made Dinah and Renee burst out laughing.

Thankfully, Dinah managed, between laughs, to place a comforting hand on Helena’s knee and said, “Babe, relax! She’s kidding.”

“I mean,” Renee interrupted her, “I _can_ see the scars on Canary’s neck. Good for you, guys, _but_ ” she nodded and then raised her hands in defense, “I’m not interested.”

Dinah sighed, “Are you going to go to the point any time soon?”

“Yeah, okay, here’s the deal…” Renee closed her eyes, rubbed the back of her neck, and took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I went deep into Gotham’s PD records, and I mean really fucking deep. I realized this wouldn’t be the first time that Roman is under fire for something sketchy going on under his club. Drugs, kidnapping, money laundering, illegal deals with blood. You name it. He’s been accused of every fucking thing and always gets away with it. But I kept asking myself _how?_ I mean, it can’t be just money. And the guy is not even that powerful. Harley isn’t even the only one around that could kick his ass. He’s not that old. That’s when it clicked for me. Old. I realized that I was asking myself the wrong question. Is not about _how_ he gets away with it, but since _when_ is Roman Sionis so powerful? When did it all begin?”

“A hundred years ago,” Helena said. She closed her eyes, but the pain was evident in her tense features and tightened fists.

“A hundred years ago,” Renee sadly confirmed it. “You said Victor Zsasz was on your list. He was there the day your family was murdered. But I found accounts that he was already working exclusively for Roman before that date. A few big names were involved that day, but none was significantly more important than the others, someone else, someone big had to be behind it all. That was, coincidentally, the year that the Sionis family kicked Roman out of their business, but he did take an absurd amount of money with him. Money that nobody knew where it ended up.”

“Spilt blood under this very roof,” Helena shook her head, “Fuck, I need a drink.”

“You’re not the only one,” Renee chuckled darkly. “After taking the credit for taking down the biggest most powerful vampire hunters family in Gotham, Roman was pretty much invincible. Now, he has taken Cass, and threatened all of us.”

“He’s kind of the reason both of you were turned into vampires, isn’t he?” Dinah asked carefully.

Helena nodded gravely, but Renee merely shrugged and said, “I was the never the kind to dwell much on that kind of thing.”

“But! There is something that personally bothers you, isn’t it?”

That was Harley. She was back in the room with them, all dressed and looking thoughtfully at Renee.

“I did lose my job and ruined my life because of what he did. Also, he’s a dick. And I like justice. Not enough reasons for you, Quinn?”

Harley made a disapproving noise and shook her head from side to side. She walked closer and ungracefully let herself fall down to sit among the others. She was on the verge of laughing, as usual, but then she looked very seriously at Renee and said, “Look me in the eyes and tell me you didn’t just find out that Roman has financed the careers of all the men in the police that take the credit for your work, get all the promotions, obstruct your investigations and end up suspending you every damn decade.”

Renee had a blank face. She didn’t react at all for a while. But eventually, she started laughing, “Fuck you, Harley.”

Harley joined in with a mischievous laugh. Then, she turned toward Helena and smiled, “See? I’m actually the smartest one here! Don’t underestimate me just because you’ve seen me eat a guy, okay?”

Helena stared apprehensively at the accusatory finger that Harley was pointing her way and mumbled, “Sure…”

“Anyway! What are we having for dinner, huh?” Harley jumped back into the conversation, “I vote for tacos, but I’m partial to Roman Sionis, depending on you girls’ plans for the night. Because he’s probably going to send a small army here any time now, just so you know.”

They all exchanged concerned looks before Renee nodded, “Yeah… we need a plan.”

“Can you guys begin your planning without me?” Dinah yawned, “I’m in desperate need of a nap.”

Dinah proceeded to stand up and stretch her body, inevitably causing Helena to blush profusely. While the woman of her dreams walked away in search of a bed or sofa that hadn’t been destroyed in that old mansion, Helena was troubled. Firstly, there was nothing more she wanted than to join Dinah in that heavenly sounding nap. But, there was more. That night, they would dive headfirst into a battle, possibly the most dangerous thing they had done in their lives, except for Harley probably. They had to do it for Cass, they had to do it for the lives and safety of each of them, for the people they lost, the pain they endured, and all other victims that were still unknown parts of the story. The risks were impossibly high, even though they were quite literally unnaturally powerful, all of them except for one though, and Helena wasn’t sure she could bear the thought of risking Dinah’s life, not that day, not ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ladies we are getting so close to the end of this fic and i am Not ready to say goodbye to vampire Helena :(  
> (if there's something that you wanted to see from vampire helena feel free to request it in the comments and i'll try to add it in these last few chapters!)
> 
> thanks again everyone so much for reading and leaving comments!!


	15. Oh, just keep on suckin' on the memory of him

Helena, Harley, and Renee walked out of the Bertinelli mansion with every bit of intensity that the night demanded of them. There was a nervous energy buzzing under the surface. Nobody had to say it out loud for them to know that just the three of them facing off against the most influential vampire of Gotham city was… risky, to say the least. But to say any of them was scared would have been a lie. Since this whole little war of theirs began Helena feared only one thing: losing Dinah. That’s why she had been the one to suggest they left without her.

“Let’s go, ladies!” Harley called over her shoulder to the other two women, “I can’t wait to kick some ass.” 

“Just another Saturday night for you, huh, Harley?” Renee chuckled, and when she turned serious again she nodded at Helena, “Are you okay, kid?”

“What? Uh, yeah, sure,” Helena nodded. She was ready to do this, but there was no denying that at least part of her mind, not to mention her entire heart, was safely kept with a sleeping Dinah inside the mansion. The contrast was huge, considering the three women were walking into arguably the most unsafe situation of their long, long lives.

Harley had kept her distance from any trouble of this magnitude for a while. Though that didn’t mean she didn’t miss the adrenaline of it. She had nothing but her supernatural strength and a change of clothes, or two. She was pretty much jumping in place and stretching her body, eager to go cause some trouble, or solve some trouble, there was little difference for her as long as it was exciting.

Then there was Renee, confident in the extreme, perhaps only slightly more confident than she should be, but that was a constant for her and so far it hadn’t gotten her killed so it must work. She was doing her part by staying sober. That didn’t mean she didn’t have maybe one drink before leaving… The point was, she was ready. She had a plan, she knew all of Roman’s little secrets, and she was armed with a few of Helena’s weapons. A gun with silver bullets, a silver knife, and Helena Bertinelli herself.

Lastly, or so she thought, was Helena. She had her favorite weapon, her crossbow, complete with plenty of crossbow bolts made of silver and dipped in holy water. She had her own gun and knives as well. And she was ready to make the best use possible of everything she had learned during her time in Sicily, Italy, all of Europe really. A hundred years of training, all for this moment.

But first, Helena had to stop in her tracks and nearly stumble down with the surprise of seeing Dinah standing by her car, arms crossed and wearing a smirk that didn’t hide her otherwise tense features.

“Going somewhere?” Dinah asked them.

“Nope! Not at all,” Harley shook her head emphatically and signaled around them with a flourish, “Just taking a stroll on these beautiful gardens…”

“Hey,” Renee whispered, placing a hand on Harley’s elbow to keep her from moving forward, “I think you and I should skip this one, Quinn.”

While the two of them hung back, Helena took a couple of strides forward until she was standing right in front of Dinah.

“You’re awake,” Helena mumbled, clueless as to what she was supposed to say.

“And _you_ were planning to leave without me,” Dinah replied, poking Helena’s chest with an accusatory finger and a little too much force, which wasn’t enough to cause a physical effect on Helena, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel all that Dinah was trying to convey with the action. Dinah was trying to keep a proud facade, but Helena could notice she looked surprisingly hurt, and the taller woman had no idea what to do with it.

Mostly as a reflex, before Dinah entirely pulled her hand away, Helena reached out and grabbed her wrist. She gently pulled her even closer as she lowered their hands and intertwined their fingers. Their newfound intimacy was there, still delicate and tender.

“I’m…” Helena hesitated, she didn’t want to apologize, and she had told herself she’d always be sincere with the other woman, “I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s the last thing I want.”

“That’s _not_ your choice to make,” Dinah replied, her words were a little strained, but with them a tension started to leave her shoulders, “I appreciate it, Helena, I do. But… I want to be there. I want to play my part in taking down roman Sionis.” She finished with a shrug and she had hesitated at one point there, but she didn’t think Helena noticed.

“Right,” the vampire mumbled, looking down, now holding Dinah’s hand with both of her own, idly playing with her fingers, “But Dinah, it’s too risky-”

“Hey,” Dinah spoke softly, placing her other hand in Helena’s cheek gently to make her look up and meet her eyes, “I know I would… get hurt, easier than you vamps. But I can hold my ground.”

“I _know_ ,” Helena insisted, “You are a spectacular woman and fighter, Dinah. You don’t have to prove anything. Your safety is more important-”

“Helena!” Dinah exclaimed, at last, losing her patience, “Don’t you get it?”

“What?”

Dinah pulled her hand free from Helena’s loving grasp and held her face with both hands now, looking directly into her eyes, and with as much honesty and feeling as she could muster she said, “You’re protecting me, I get it. I want to protect you too.”

“Protect me?” Helena whispered back, now placing her hands on Dinah’s waist and if possible pulling her closer.

“Yes. I think it’s about time that someone cared about you, don’t you think?” Dinah chuckled lovingly before continuing on seriously, “I just can’t sit back and wait while you risk everything out there. I _have_ to go with you. I have to be there if you need me. Don't ask me to leave you alone, I won’t.”

She watched adoringly at the way Helena’s face went through many emotions in a short span of time. The realization, the moment the words settled warmly in her heart and made sense, the tears springing naturally to her eyes and the immediate frown that followed to keep them from falling.

“I am not scared when I am with you,” Dinah added with finality.

“But I’m only scared when you’re with me,” Helena smiled sheepishly.

It was clear the message had gotten to Helena, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight to the last moment, even in a loving argument, which Dinah was hoping would help them in that night’s fight. What wouldn’t be useful though, was a scared Helena Bertinelli. That night they would need the tactical and precise killing machine that she usually was.

Not knowing exactly how else to convey her point, Dinah stood on her tiptoes and unexpectedly captured Helena’s lips with her own. They heard Harley cheer in the background and Renee laugh, but they ignored them completely. The kiss was perfect, if they had to describe it. It wasn’t soft, it wasn’t intentionally alluring, it was absolute passion and it was, most of all, a promise.

“Well stop that,” Dinah breathlessly said when she finally pulled away from a blushing Helena, “I don’t want you to be afraid. I want to see you kick ass. I want to see you at your best. And I want you to believe that we’ll both be better when knowing we have each other’s backs out there.”

“Okay,” Helena granted her a small grin, maybe those were exactly the right words, or maybe one kiss was enough to change her mind drastically, but she immediately moved forward for another kiss. Dinah happily indulged her.

“Okay! That’s enough,” Renee grumbled, moving past them and getting in the car, “I’m driving!”

“Let’s go lovebirds!” Harley added, literally jumping in the car, “By the way, we’re still here ya know? It’d be super nice to hear an ‘I got your back Harley,’ ‘I don’t want you to die a very unpleasant death today, Harley’”

Still standing in front of the car, Helena groaned loudly and let her head fall on Dinah’s shoulder, while the younger woman laughed. “Let’s go,” Dinah whispered one last time, kissing Helena’s cheek and getting them both in the car.

“I agree with Harley, for once,” Renee put on her sunglasses, even though the sun was starting to come down, and started the car, “Just for the record, we care about you two assholes too. Don’t dismiss me just ‘cause I wouldn’t take either of you to bed.”

“Hey! Speak for yourself, Montoya!” Harley interrupted her, “Have you seen Canary’s legs? Bertinelli’s arms? Man, I _would-_ ”

A collective, “Harley stop!” was heard in the car, as the group drove toward their hopefully not final destination.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! Thanks for reading!!
> 
> Okay this was totally meant to be about the big fight but i'm a coward and i'm stalling for more time with these vampire idiots lol  
> but now we've run out of lyrics of that hayley williams song so let's see what happens there with the chapters titles
> 
> okay, that's it, thanks everyone for reading and comments always make me very happy :D !


	16. The End Pt. 1

It turned out that Renee Montoya had a plan. The four of them made a good team but, to effectively work as one, they would have to briefly take different paths. Roman wanted the heads of the Crossbow Killer, of the meddling cop, of the only vampire more powerful than him, and of the human singer that dared to betray his trust. He now knew they knew each other, though he didn’t know they would strike together. Because it just so happened that _they_ wanted the head of the men responsible for the Bertinelli massacre, for the kidnapping of Cassandra Cain, for illegal business with innocent’s blood, and for being a regular pain in the ass for Gotham.

It started with Helena. She showed up in the back alley of the Black Mask Club. She shot a perfectly aimed silver bolt through the neck of the guy guarding the back entrance of the place. It wasn’t subtle, she wanted the attention, and since Roman had been waiting for her, it had been only a matter of seconds before dozens of vampires working for him came out for her. If only they had known they were the distraction.

Although at first, it was exactly what it looked like, Helena didn’t work alone. Dinah showed up a few moments later. She was equipped with every bit of deadly power from all the talismans and weapons of the Bertinelli’s legacy that she could carry. And she had Helena’s back. See, killing a vampire, or at least harming them enough that they stop fighting you, wasn’t exactly easy. One of them could take care of wounding a man, but they had to be quick and move on since they were heavily outnumbered. The way they fought together was a violent dance, elegant and synchronized brutality with a single goal for the time being: survive. Helena punched and shot, and Dinah kicked and stabbed, throwing men over their shoulders, throwing them to the ground, shielding their bodies with them too, finishing each other’s targets as if it had been rehearsed to perfection. Meanwhile, something else was going on.

With all of Roman’s security dealing with the powerful duo in the back, there was pretty much nobody there to greet Renee and Harley at the front door. In the end, they couldn’t have said which one of them had the idea of blatantly barging in through the front doors of the club. Something about pride, drama, or irony, but the action called to both of them. Now, Harley might have been powerful enough just as she was, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t attracted to certain weapons. After blowing up the front door and taking care of the couple of stray guards left behind, the two women split their paths. Renee went looking for the stairs to the basement, Harley went in and blew up another door.

“Hello boys,” she grinned, excitement sparkling in her eyes as she joined her friends in the alley behind the club. Everyone knew Harley Quinn, pretty much everyone was scared of Harley Quinn, and somewhere there was also _admiration_ for Harley Quinn. Roman’s goons were equal parts terrified and excited about trying to fight her. Even more, when a handful of them jumped on Harley, and they ended up thrown away by a feral hyena, they couldn’t have cared any less about Dinah. The human of the group dragged along one of the agonizing bodies to shield herself, and soon, she was inside the club, going down the stairs to meet Renee and Cass.

The scene playing underneath the Black Mask Club was that of a horror movie, Dinah thought. The monster that Roman was, he had arranged to kidnap innocent people, to keep them hostage in that basement, to freely extract their blood so he could sell it at the most expensive price in the city, until they didn’t have any more to give. Of course, the hostages had security with them at all hours. But Renee Montaya had been waiting a hundred years to do the right thing. She attacked without mercy. She used her gun, she used the Bertinelli’s weapons, and she wouldn’t have allowed herself to lose. When Dinah arrived, she quickly surveyed the scene. There was a limp body by the bottom of the stairs, and Renee was on top of a man, twisting a silver dagger on his chest, while another man, wounded, studied the situation from a safe distance and prepared to face her.

When she felt the young woman enter the room, Renee immediately looked up and shook her head, “Cass is not here.”

Dinah cursed, took one last look at the frightening room, considered that Renee had it under control, and with a resolute nod she said, “I’ll go find her. I have to.”

She was gone before Renee could tell her it was safer for Dinah to deal with the hostages while she looked for Cass.

_Bait_. That was the word ringing in Dinah’s mind as she ran upstairs to Roman’s apartment above the club. The asshole had used Cassandra as bait for the rest of them, and it perfectly worked, but he was surely going to pay for it. The fiery thought, however, was interrupted when Dinah arrived at the top of the stairs just to meet Victor Zsasz face to face. She hurried to take one of the Bertinelli’s talismans out of her back pocket, she aimed it at him and although she clearly saw the strain of pain on his face he didn’t mind. He yanked the small thing out of her hand, threw it away, and kicked her down the stairs.

At the bottom, when Dinah looked up, ignoring the pain and the fear, she heard Zsasz laugh and call out to her, “Come up, little bird. You’re late.”

Dinah didn’t need to be asked twice. She ran up the stairs and she fought Victor Zsasz with everything she had. She had no idea how old he was, if anyone knew, if he even remembered. But either he was worthy of comparison to Harley, or he was incredibly reckless in a fight. Either way, it worked. He waved away the charms, and the just pulled out the dagger she stabbed his back with. He was just having fun with her. Or, he had been, until a holy-water-dipped, silver bold from Helena’s crossbow pierced his neck. He took that out too, and it was incredible to see him get up and continue to fight, but he didn’t have long, and he knew that. 

Harley was handling her opponents downstairs, Renee was taking care of her part of the job, and Helena had felt the exact moment that Dinah needed her help. She thought she’d had arrived just in time. Together they fought Victor Zsasz with fury, with precision, and with the best they had, knowing they were fighting side by side. It wasn’t easy, at that point he was more animal than man, but they would have been fine. That’s when Roman Sionis came out of his hiding place and shot Helena in the back.

She would have been fine, it was _nothing_ , she told herself. But she did fall down, and she had no way to communicate to Dinah that she would be fine, so it was enough to distract the younger woman, enough time for Zsasz to grab her by the neck and with brutal, unnatural strength, throw her across the hallway to the wall. The sounds of Dinah’s body crashing against the wall, and then falling to the floor, instantly let a mark in Helena’s heart. Just like the worst night of her life a hundred years ago, she knew at once she would never forget the fear, and the pain, and the sounds of it.

Helena was a lethal cocktail of blind rage and a perfectly trained assassin. As soon as she got up, older or not, Victor Zsasz didn’t stand a chance. Helena pulled a dagger that, ironically, she faintly remembered her father might have been saving for Harley, and then she attacked Zsasz for once and for all. She knocked him down and in an instant, she had finished the mission she waited a century for, her revenge was complete, she was done. She finished slashing Victor Zsasz’s throat the moment that Harley arrived at the scene. Roman was getting away, and Dinah was drifting away. Helena needed to make a decision, and she needed to be quick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aahh it's almost the end!!! i'm not readyy (definitely will include an epilogue!)
> 
> thanks so much everyone for reading, for all the beautiful comments, for everything!


	17. The End Pt. 2

Helena was kneeling on the ground beside Dinah, helplessly trying to assess the damage. There was blood, a lot of it. Dinah was struggling to breathe and her face was pulled into a pained frown, but she was conscious, and she could talk. The vampire had no way to determine how bad or not it was.

“I don’t know what to do,” Helena whispered, her voice trembling as much as her hands as they timidly brushed away Dinah’s hair off her face.

“Would you?” Dinah coughed, opening her eyes for a moment to look at the woman she was falling for.

“What?” the vampire blurted out, feeling on edge, more terrified each passing second, and unable to forget that Cass was somewhere out there still under the grasp of Roman Sionis’s claws. 

For a moment, all Dinah could do was focus every ounce of her energy on breathing, deep, slow breaths, and staying conscious. “Would you?” she repeated, “would you bite me?” She managed a little smile when she saw the shock take over Helena’s features. “If I needed it, and it was the only option. If I asked, and I wanted… but you hate that part… of yourself and I’m… I’m sorry-”

“Shh, Dinah, stop,” Helena interrupted her as gently as she possibly could. There were tears brimming in both their eyes. As Dinah talked she struggled more and more, the pain increased and it was obvious how much it hurt. Helena didn’t even need to hear all of it. “Yes,  _ of course _ I would,” she replied, no hesitation whatsoever could be heard in her voice, “I would do anything for you, Dinah. I promise.”

At point Helena had been putting all her focus so desperately in making sure her touch was so perfectly careful as to not hurt Dinah, that she barely noticed the other woman put a hand on her shoulder. She only snapped out of her worry when she saw, when she  _ felt  _ Dinah pull her down as she used the last of her strength to lean up and kiss Helena.

The kiss, brief as it was, was also the sweetest, the most delicate thing Helena could remember experiencing in a century of life. When it was over, the vampire helped Dinah lay down as comfortably as possible.

“We’ll discuss that later, it’s not necessary now though,” Dinah said with a small smirk, and after being interrupted with a cough she added, “Go. Help the others. I’ll be fine. And yes, I’m  _ sure _ .”

Helena, still slightly blushing because of the kiss, figured out there was no use in arguing with Dinah, she sounded completely confident. Before leaving, Helena picked up Dinah’s hand and softly kissed her knuckles, “I’ll be back,” she promised, right before taking off to where she was needed.

The scene outside the club was frightening. Roman was there, all pride and confidence, holding a knife against Cass’ throat and laughing at Harley. There was nothing Harley could do, not even as a hyena, not even she was fast enough to get to him and hurt him before he could use his knife. That’s where Helena arrived.

She was a vampire, and it had taken a hundred years of despising the fact for her to finally make peace with it. She was also a hunter, she was a Bertinelli, and she would never deny that fact. The two parts of herself that had been at war for the longest time, causing her incredible pain, but somehow led her to this life-changing moment. A vampire, a hunter, and the person that arrived just in time to shoot her crossbow at Roman.

The arrow piercing through his shoulder made him pull his arm away from Cass. While he was busy screaming in his usual fashion, Cass made quick work of one of the many items of protection she always carried with herself. A second later and a splash of holy water on his face and Roman was stumbling away from the kid, screaming in pain, and right in the sights of a very, very angry hyena.

* * *

In a matter of minutes that, after everything, felt like hours, everything changed. The police and several ambulances were outside the Black Mask club, arresting the surviving members of Sionis’ team, taking care of the hostages, and promptly driving them away from the place. Behind the club though, the scene wasn’t any less interesting. The strange group of five, despite just going through a very extraordinary, life-or-death experience together, were actively lying to each other.

Renee insisted that she didn’t care  _ at all  _ about the fact that she couldn’t take the credit for taking down the criminals that she’d been fighting for a hundred years. Cass was swearing that hadn’t been scared at all and that she could’ve escaped by herself just as easily and they didn’t have to do all this for her. Harley, even while still wiping blood off her face and wearing the emergency change of clothes she left in the car, was denying that as a hyena she ate Roman Sionis’ body. Dinah, lying half-unconscious in the back of her car, was refusing the need to go to the hospital, saying the healing talismans from the Bertinellis’ vault would do the trick and she wasn’t even in that much pain. And finally, Helena, well, she was insisting on driving Dinah to the hospital just because it was the right thing to do, not because she loved her.

The thing about fighting for your life side by side with someone else is that they can tell if you’re blatantly lying like that. Renee was pissed with the police department’s ungratefulness, but the feeling couldn’t match her pride and joy at what they just achieved. Cass was, truthfully, still somewhat terrified, but grateful beyond words for this strange group of friends that she was starting to believe would always have her back. Harley, okay, yes, she had just eaten a man’s body, but she did it in the spirit of friendship. Dinah was in a lot of pain, eager to just pass out for at least a day, and mildly considering not getting close to any vampires for a while. Well, all vampires but two or three that she liked. One in particular she liked more than the rest: Helena. Helena who was, and everyone could tell this, deeply in love with Dinah. The feeling was mutual too.

Finally, all of them climbed into Dinah’s car, and as they started driving away, “Oh! I almost forgot something!” Harley exclaimed. Then, while laughing in a way that would hardly be classified as anything but evil, she pulled out a small remote, pressed a button, and set off a series of explosives that blew up the entire building of the Black Mask club.

After extremely shocked exclamations and curses and Helena almost crashing the car, everyone was left silent while Harley giggled to herself. 

“So, what now? Can we go have something to eat?” Cass broke the silence.

Everyone agreed immediately. Although their first destination would likely be the hospital, the group was riding on that pleasant high after surviving the day, feeling light, and connected, and free. Casual conversation started to float around the car, nonchalantly throwing around plans for the future, discussing vacations, business, new homes, new love, new enemies, everything in between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm soooo sorry for the long long wait but finally here it is!! Please let me know what you thought?
> 
> We only have the epilogue left :( but i promise that i'll try to make it good and worth it and not take too long to post it lol
> 
> thanks again for all the kudos and comments, everything is sooo appreciated! <3


End file.
